Sadiq Khan’s election victory as London mayor “buck the trend” of Muslim voters leaving Labor over the party’s stance on the war in Gaza, party insiders said.
The 53-year-old won a third term as mayor of the capital on Saturday without losing the support of large numbers of Muslim voters, unlike England’s other Labor candidates last week.
But last week Labor candidates in other parts of the UK lost significant numbers of Muslim voters. Richard Parker became mayor of the West Midlands after a bitter battle with Andy Street, but a significant number of voters did not support the independent candidate whose campaign focused on Gaza. It would have been much easier for Labor members to do so.
Criminal defense lawyer Akhmed Yacoub came third in Birmingham alone with 42,923 votes, while Parker saw a significant drop in Labor’s 2021 vote.
By contrast, Mr Khan defeated his Conservative rival Susan Hall by 275,828 votes, an 11% margin.
In his victory speech, Khan said: “While we have faced a constant campaign of negativity, we have responded to fear-mongering with facts, to hatred with hope, and to attempts to divide with efforts at unity.” I couldn’t be more proud.”
He also expressed his gratitude to his family, saying: I’m really sorry for letting this happen. ”
Labor supporters argue that even though the YouGov poll held up to the end, the mayor’s opposition to Gaza, opposition to Ultra-Low Emissions Zones (Ures) outside London, and the change from proportional representation to first-time system I was worried that I would suffer from the switch. For the week, Mr. Khan’s 47% was well ahead of Susan Hall’s 25%.
After the votes were counted, Mr. Ures appeared to have little effect, but the mayor fared well in two districts with large Muslim voters.
In the north-east, which includes Waltham Forest, Mr Khan received 127,455 first-choice votes compared to 111,359 in 2021, but in the city’s east, which includes Newham and Tower Hamlets, turnout was lower. Despite losing 30,000 votes, Mr. Khan received nearly 10,000 more votes than his first choice. In 2021.
This emphatic victory contradicted reports from the BBC and other media, which claimed the race was close. Thorsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, told Saturday’s reporting – now or at any point in the past 24 hours.” “There should have been very high evidence to think this was close,” he added.
Mr Khan was one of the earliest Labor leaders to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, after saying in October last year that Israel had the “right” to withhold electricity and water from Gaza. , in contrast to the Labor leadership, which suffered multiple defections and resignations.
There was a fierce reaction from people on the left, and it continued to smolder. At the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s most recent march in London last month, the most obvious political placards were demonic cutouts of Starmer and his deputy Angela Lyner (dubbed Starmer of Genocide, Angela of Death). was.
Ali Milani, national chairman of the Labor Party Muslim Network and a former Labor MP who ran against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge in 2021, said many Muslim voters felt betrayed by Labour’s stance on Gaza. Stated.
“This is what I’ve been warning about for months, this is no longer polls and speculation, this is real voting,” he said. “Whether it’s Oldham or Bolton, Birmingham or Newcastle Elswick, there’s no doubt that there are serious problems at the moment.
“Sadiq is bucking the trend, but for a reason. He called for a ceasefire very early on. He now supports halting arms sales as long as they are clearly in violation of international law. So he did what we should have done and reaped the benefits of the election.
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“Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, Muslims do not believe that the Labor Party values the lives of Palestinians and Muslims as much as anyone else. Nothing sums that up better than the message we’re sending to other seats, districts and mayoral races.”
Professor Will Jennings from the University of Southampton said last week’s poll showed that in areas where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim, this led to a 17.9% drop in Labor’s vote.
Labor gained control of eight councils but lost seats and lost control of Oldham Council in Greater Manchester. Unable to regain Oxford, it lost ground in Blackburn along with Darwen and Bradford, and the British Labor Party, founded by George Galloway, lost Rusfer Rahman’s seat as deputy leader of Manchester City Council.
A Momentum spokesperson said the defeat should be a “wake-up call to the Labor Party leadership” and that Mr Starmer should call for an end to arms sales to Israel. The paper said: “A party that takes its core vote for granted risks ruin sooner or later. When the going gets tough, Labor will need to rally its support base, but from climate change to Gaza… , Keir Starmer’s interest appears to be undiminished.
Sundar Katwala, director of British Future, said that while there was a bigger impact on Labor’s votes during local elections than in national polls, it may not have as much of an impact on Labour’s chances in the general election. Stated.
He said: “Based on the results of this local election, Labor’s general election plans are progressing very well, because they are progressing in many areas where Labor is not strong.” .
However, because city council districts were a fraction of the size of electoral districts, they could be more easily controlled by particular groups than parliamentary districts. “There are hundreds of seats on district councils where Muslim voter groups have a majority, but that is only the case in his three constituencies in Westminster,” he said.
Katwala added that while Palestine is unusually prominent among voters’ concerns compared to other foreign policy issues, Muslim voters are not a single bloc. “People are exaggerating the number of Muslim voters and how they vote en masse,” he says. “These results are very similar to the post-Iraq impact of 2005. It’s not that Muslims voted as a bloc, but that the Muslim vote was much more fragmented than ever before. ”
