Labour should listen to pro-Gaza voters. But it’s letting toxic narratives about them flourish | Owen Jones

Here is a tale of two defeats. After the 2019 general election, when Labour lost many seats in parts of England that were crudely labelled the “red wall”, strategists, politicians and pundits emphasised the need to listen, to learn and to rebuild trust with the voters they had lost. In 2024, the party lost several seats to independent candidates in results that shocked seasoned observers of British politics. This time, Labour’s reaction has been rather different.

To give you a sense of how remarkable these independent victories were: since 1950 there have been eight independents elected to the Commons in competitive contests in which the mainstream parties haven’t stood down. Five of them were elected this year. One of them was the purged former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, but the four others – all Muslim – won in campaigns in which Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza featured heavily in voters’ minds. Not everyone who voted for these independent candidates was Muslim, and Gaza was by no means the only relevant factor, but in the 21 constituencies in which more than 30% of the population is Muslim, Labour’s vote share dropped from an average of 65% in 2019 to just 36% this time.

Indeed, since the election, Labour has shifted on Gaza – tentatively, but in a welcome direction. This has included reinstating funding to Unrwa and reversing the Tory attempt to block the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants .

Yet at the same time, a toxic narrative about pro-Gaza voters, and these independent candidates, is being allowed to flourish. Rather than reflect critically on the Labour party’s positioning on the war or listen to the concerns raised by voters who abandoned the party, the political establishment has closed ranks. The votes were quickly denounced as “ sectarian ” – as though they were the mindless actions of a herd. The former West Midlands mayor Andy Street called the results “ alarming ” and blamed “faith-based politics”, while acknowledging that the “Gaza issue” needed to be “resolved”. When Keir Starmer was asked by ITV about Labour’s setbacks among Muslim voters, he refused to engage with the issue at hand, simply saying , “Where we didn’t secure the votes, we’ll address that.”

One of the most prominent figures trying to set the narrative about these defeats is Jonathan Ashworth. One of Labour’s main communicators in the election campaign, Ashworth would have expected a plum job in the new government as a member of the cabinet. He had a majority of 22,675 in his Leicester South constituency, only to lose to a local optometrist and community activist, Shockat Adam. Ashworth has since set his sights on the Muslim Vote, an organisation set up to primarily back MPs that opposed Israel’s assault on Gaza. He implied it had sinister aims because it called for MPs to be “punished”. In fact, in a statement from February, the group said: ‘“We’re working so that MPs who didn’t vote for a ceasefire are punished” – the idea of “punishing” parties at the ballot box is frequently used in British political discourse, particularly during the recent election, as the Muslim Vote pointed out itself. Ashworth also claimed he was the victim of a “foul and obnoxious lie” that he had Palestinian blood on his hands, and alleged bullying and intimidation, citing being chased down the street .

The mild-mannered Adam saw the election differently. “I was knocking on doors where there wasn’t a Muslim majority in wards and they were asking me about Gaza,” he told me when we spoke. One now infamous clip from an LBC interview cut through locally, Adam notes, and not just among Muslim constituents: when Starmer was asked if he thought it “appropriate” that Israel should besiege Gaza, cutting off power and water, he replied: “ I think Israel does have that right .” Ashworth, Shockat tells me, is “probably a decent bloke”, but is angry and resentful because “he personally has now lost that election and he didn’t see it coming”.

There was also Labour’s Khalid Mahmood, whose 15,317 majority was overturned by the barrister and former councillor Ayoub Khan. Mahmood suggests he was cheated and alleges violations of electoral law, which he claims the police were aware of but did not act on. The onus is on Mahmood to substantiate these claims. In response, Khan – until recently a Liberal Democrat – tells me he ran “a very fair campaign” that emphasised his local reputation. There was also Iqbal Mohamed, an IT consultant who triumphed in Dewsbury and Batley, after a selection campaign to choose an independent candidate; he has had similar accusations levelled against his supporters by the defeated Labour candidate, Heather Iqbal, a former adviser to Rachel Reeves (Mohamed rejects the allegations). Speaking to me, he emphasised how atheists and Muslims alike campaigned together. It wasn’t just about Gaza either, he adds, citing children going to bed hungry and a collapsing NHS as voters’ concerns.

Related: A new terror has entered the Gaza war: that it is ushering in an age of total immorality | Nesrine Malik

If candidates in the 2024 election suffered abuse or there were violations of electoral law, this needs to be taken seriously and acted on. But let’s not lose sight of the broader picture here. For the past few months, many voters have seen some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century perpetrated by a close British ally, and livestreamed on a daily basis. They expected their local MPs to give voice to the horror they were feeling. Instead, the Labour party spent months procrastinating, triangulating and even justifying what Israel was doing. The party only belatedly backed a ceasefire motion when the Scottish National party cornered it with its own motion, and even then stripped away references to Israel’s “collective punishment”. It long refused to back ending arms sales, and – at the time – legitimised smears against Unrwa, Gaza’s main humanitarian agency.

Many voters interpreted this, quite rationally, as the party acting on the assumption that some lives – brown, Muslim – didn’t really matter; some voters, therefore, concluded that this attitude might apply to them, too. But instead of trying to understand and engage with why they suffered such historic defeats, many defeated Labour MPs have sought to portray what happened as illegitimate and sinister.

In Britain, a message has been loudly sent and received. If you are a white voter who feels antagonised by migrants, and stops voting Labour, then politicians and media outlets will accommodate your needs. If you are a Muslim voter who expresses distress at a brutal war through the democratic process – by peacefully protesting or voting – then you will be written off as part of a menacing rabble. It really is a dangerous narrative – one that risks undermining the integrity of our democracy.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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