Sectarian politics in the UK could go mainstream

You’d expect me to think this, given what I do for a living, but words matter. How we describe something can change entirely the way we think about it. You only have to look at what’s happening in Gaza to see the starkest example of this. For those of us who believe in Israel’s right to defend itself, the current war in Gaza is just that – a war. There are, of course, Israelis and supporters of Israel who disagree with the continuing operation, but they don’t consider it illegitimate, rather misguided.

But Israel’s enemies don’t call it a war. The label they have attached to it is genocide. And from the moment that word was used, everything changed. Or, to be more accurate, perceptions changed. Nothing has actually changed. Israel is not committing a genocide; the IDF rules of engagement remain in place. That has become almost irrelevant, however, in terms of how Israel is portrayed and regarded by those who know nothing about the reality, and form their opinions based only on headlines and propaganda.

Which brings us to last week’s local elections. Buried under the undoubted significance of the main story – the rise of Reform – lies another development which is potentially of far greater concern: the rise of sectarian politics and the success of the “Gaza independents”. The results confirmed that the trend of the general election was here to stay. A series of independent Muslim candidates running on platforms to appeal only to fellow Muslim voters won.

Candidates like 18-year-old Maheen Kamran, who took Burnley Central East with 38 per cent of the vote, beating Reform on 30 per cent. Labour could manage only third with 14 per cent – down from 49 per cent in 2021. Ms Kamran wants “segregated areas” to prevent “free mixing”, as she puts it, between men and women. Her fellow independent Usman Arif, who left Labour over the Gaza war, joins her on the Lancashire County Council. Another independent, Azhar Ali, was elected in Pendle. Ali was dumped as Labour’s candidate in last year’s Rochdale by-election after he had been recorded making insinuations about “certain Jewish quarters” in the media and had said Israel “allowed” the October 7 massacres to happen to justify a war in Gaza.

Their victories follow those of the four “Gaza independents” in July in Leicester South, Blackburn, Birmingham Perry Barr and Dewsbury and Batley, after similar candidates had won two months earlier in local elections in Blackburn, Bradford and Oldham.

These results, and others where the candidates were not elected but won significant support, show that candidates running on their exclusive appeal to Muslims can either win or secure enough votes in such seats to pose a real threat to Labour – seats such as Ilford North, where Health Secretary Wes Streeting only just held on by 528 votes from British-Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad; Bethnal Green, where Rushanara Ali clung on narrowly; or Birmingham Yardley, where Jess Phillips scraped home by 693 votes.

To see the potential scale of this trend, consider that there are 37 constituencies with a Muslim population over 20 per cent, and in a further 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. Labour’s vote fell by over 14 per cent last year from 2019 in those constituencies where the Muslim population was above 15 per cent. It’s a big deal. This is why words matter. By describing them as they wish to be described – Gaza independents, or a variant on that theme – we are obscuring what they are and represent. For sure, the Gaza war has given them political lift off. But they are pushing a sectarian agenda. And they should be labelled as such.

This isn’t my assertion. There is an umbrella group behind many of these candidates which is focused on a Muslim political agenda: The Muslim Vote, which is formed by 24 activist groups to promote selected candidates. Its policy pledges include targeting the police, demanding that their “structural and institutional Islamophobia” is addressed, along with increasing “cultural sensitivity across the justice system, including through mandatory unconscious bias training”. It wants reform of Ofcom’s rules on extremism and for all public sector pension pots to include a proportion of “sharia-compliant investments and fund managers”.

The Muslim Vote also demands the adoption of the APPG on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia, the removal of “the divisive ‘extremism’ definition and for government to constructively engage with grassroots Muslim organisations enjoying popular support.”

It is also focused on the rejection of the Shawcross Review of Prevent, advocating “instead implementing the recommendations of the People’s Review of Prevent and engaging with the eventual recommendations of the Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy, and Practice”. The People’s Review of Prevent is, in reality, a statement by Dr Layla Aitlhadj, a director and case worker at advocacy group Prevent Watch, and Professor John Holmwood, who campaigns against Prevent. 

The real problem is not that there will be a sudden flood of such sectarian candidates winning but the impact they are going to have on politics more widely. Labour’s huge win last July obscured how small many MPs’ majorities now are. The risk is that MPs may start to embrace these demands to try to head off the threat to their seats in 2029. And thus without actually needing to win in many seats, sectarian Muslim politicians will actually have won, as Labour MPs begin to sanitise their policy demands into the mainstream.

If you doubt this, watch what happens next year in the local elections in London and Birmingham. We saw last July how vulnerable Labour MPs were – and that was before it had dawned on them what was really happening. Now that the rise of sectarian politics is obvious to all, they will see all too clearly the increasing threat to their seats. And the rest of us will see all too clearly where that leads.

So let’s stop calling them “Gaza independents”, when Gaza is merely one issue they are focused on, and start calling them what they are: Sectarians.