The winners this time had been all endorsed by the Muslim Vote, an influential marketing campaign alliance of 24 activist teams that aimed to drive Muslim voters away from Labour and the Tories to its endorsed candidates.The umbrella group is extremely crucial of Labour’s early stance on Gaza, notably not backing a ceasefire vote within the Home of Commons in Nov 2023.
The 5 unbiased winners are PIOs Iqbal Mohamed and Shockat Adam, British-Pakistanis Ayoub Khan and Adnan Hussain, and Jeremy Corbyn.
A YouGov ballot earlier than the election discovered that 41% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons stated the “the state of affairs in Gaza and Israel” was one of many prime points in deciding how they might vote, in comparison with 5% for the entire public.
Writing within the
Day by day Telegraph
, Rakib Ehsan stated: “For years Labour has indulged in Muslim non secular id politics based mostly on each home and foreign-policy grievances based mostly on Palestine and Kashmir. Now, they’re getting a bit of style of their very own identitarian drugs.”
Sam Ashworth-Hayes wrote in the identical paper: “Essentially the most important end result from Thursday might not have been the wipe-out of the Conservative Celebration. As a substitute, it may turn into the return of sectarian politics to England.”
In constituencies the place no less than 40% of individuals described their faith as Muslim, the Labour vote share suffered a median drop of 33.9%. A number of Labour MPs focused by the Muslim Vote solely simply held on to their seats.
Impartial MP Mohamed, whose dad and mom arrived from India within the Sixties, received Dewsbury and Batley with 15,641 votes, leaving the Labour candidate, British-Pakistani Heather Iqbal, in second place with 8,707 votes.
Mohamed, an engineer and administration guide, stated: “I’m a proud first-generation British-Indian Muslim born and raised in Dewsbury.” He stated he had initially deliberate to face as a Labour candidate however resigned when it didn’t name for a ceasefire in Gaza final yr.
One other unbiased MP, Adam, is an Indian-origin Gujarati Muslim optometrist raised in Leicester. He brought about one of many greatest upsets of the evening when he unseated Labour’s shadow paymaster Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South, narrowly successful by 979 votes. The seat has been held by Labour since 1987, other than one by-election in 2004.
Adam moved to Leicester from Africa within the 70s. Because the outcomes got here out, he held up a keffiyeh scarf and stated: “That is for the folks of Gaza.”
