Increasing Muslim Disenchantment with Labour
Our crystal ball is a little cloudy. We are thus, unable to say whether Labour’s problems are a temporary blip or whether we are seeing a permanent realignment.
We have been here before. The invasion of Iraq gave life to Respect, which enjoyed local successes and provided George Galloway with work.
But it didn’t last.
In a first-past-the-post electoral system the odds are always with the big players who effectively marshal grand coalitions. There are plenty of smaller parties vying for seats at Westminster. Most of them will be unsuccessful.
Galloway has started Respect 2.2 (The Workers Party). In Newham, the Independent Group have shown themselves to be sympathetic to Galloway, partly because of Gaza and partly because of the pro-Muslim left-rhetoric which Galloway is famous for.
Historically, the Greens have shown themselves to be capable of local electoral arrangements with Respect in the name of political expediency. Labour must be concerned that this could happen in Newham.
A non-aggression pact between the Greens and the Independents could cause some problems for Labour.
At the heart of this is a fundamental malaise in Labour. Its not simply between those who take an incrementalist approach to social change and those longing for the day when blood runs in the streets and the bodies of class traitors are seen hanging from the lamp posts.
Increasingly it is between those who believe in universal principles and those infatuated with intersectional analysis.
It is the subjection of policy to increasingly small groups who can identify themselves as part of the community of the oppressed. When 0.2% of the entire population can get the Leader of the Labour Party to say that a woman has a penis, with a straight face, you know that you have a problem.
Labour has been content to rely upon and reward power brokers in ethnic communities in return for votes. This is now coming back to haunt them. We have noted how members of the Muslim community in Newham have been quite promiscuous in their party allegiances. (We were recently informed by the Independent Group that former Tory candidate Ilyas Sharif, now Independent Group candidate, is in addition, a former Labour Party member.)
Just what principles do parties claim to promote when, it seems, you can believe anything?
It is little wonder that politics promotes cynicism in the general public.
Anyway, tweets on the Independent Twitter (X) page suggest that Labour is going to suffer in the polls in Newham in May or September, or whenever Rishi Sunak feels brave enough to go to the country.
People who have not given a moment’s thought to the plight of their co-religionists in other places, (Kurds bombed by Turks in Syria or Kurds shelled by Persians in Iraq; Arabs killed in their hundreds of thousands in Syria; ditto in Yemen; the plight of Afghanis and Uighurs etc etc) have made Gaza a cause celebre. Gaza is a tragedy, but it is one tragedy amongst many and one in which Hamas is the primary cause.
By our calculations, no less than one million Muslims have been killed in the last decade or so. Apparently, their deaths mean very little to the current crop of protesters. Gaza and Palestine are what matters and Labour looks set to see much of the vote it relied upon in certain areas ebb away because it refuses to bend to the Goebbelesque assertions of genocide.
As we said, this may be a temporary blip (say 10 years) or it may be the first stirrings of a permanent shift in allegiances.
If the former, will Labour open its arms again to the avowed antisemites in this group, the Jew-hating type? If they bring votes, we have a horrible suspicion that we know the answer.
What the Independent Group has been saying on social media:
