UK’s Starmer swept the July 4 election. But how much did his stance on Gaza cost him?
Britain’s Labour lost a fair share of Muslim votes even as it sailed to victory in the national poll. New research suggests the party’s support for Israel wasn’t solely to blame
Robert Philpot is a writer and journalist. He is the former editor of Progress magazine and the author of “Margaret Thatcher: The Honorary Jew.”
LONDON — If there was one dark cloud on the political horizon following British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s landslide victory at the polls earlier this month, it came in the form of the election of a clutch of pro-Gaza independent candidates in some of his party’s safest seats.
One of Starmer’s top allies, Jonathan Ashworth, was ousted in Leicester South, while a steep drop in the party’s support among normally loyal Muslim voters saw Labour toppled in Blackburn, Dewsbury and Batley, and Birmingham Perry Barr.
“This is for Gaza. I cannot deny that I stand here as the result of a protest vote on the back of a genocide,” Adnan Hussain, a 34-year-old solicitor, declared after it was announced he had won Blackburn, a seat Labour had previously held by more than 18,000 votes.
Labour’s discomfort was exacerbated by its failure to prevent the party’s former leader, the fiercely anti-Israel Jeremy Corbyn, from holding on to his north London seat as an independent.
And the party also suffered some nail-biting close-shaves: most notably, the new health secretary, Wes Streeting, came within a whisker of defeat at the hands of 23-year-old British-Palestinian Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North in northeast London. Similarly, Jess Phillips, who Starmer has appointed a junior minister in the Home Office, barely survived a challenge by the far-left anti-Israel Workers’ Party in her seat of Birmingham Yardley, eking out a wafer-thin 700-vote victory.
But new research published this week suggests the fall in Muslim support for Labour wasn’t simply about the party’s stance on Gaza.
“Gaza appears to have had a similar effect to the role that Brexit played in unanchoring Labour voters in the Red Wall — a trigger for wider discontent,” says a report titled “Change Pending: The Path to the 2024 General Election and Beyond,” jointly authored by the think tank More in Common and the Policy Lab at University College London.
“As Brexit was never just about the European Union, the vote for Gaza independents is about more than just Gaza, it’s a signal that they have had enough of their traditional party of choice overlooking their priorities,” the authors write.
Gaza appears to have had a similar effect to the role that Brexit played in unanchoring Labour voters in the Red Wall — a trigger for wider discontent
Overall, a record number of Britons voted for independent candidates — who mostly ran on pro-Gaza platforms in heavily Muslim districts — and more were elected to the House of Commons than in any election since 1945. Even as it sailed towards a 172-seat majority that rivals the one secured by Tony Blair in 1997, Labour lost the support of around half a million Muslim voters.
Outsized attention to a foreign conflict
While Labour has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Starmer has also repeatedly backed Israel’s right to defend itself and ditched the party’s previous commitment to “immediately and unilaterally” recognize a Palestinian state.
Coming on the back of a surge in antisemitism and months of anti-Israel demonstrations on the streets of British cities, the election of independents on pro-Gaza platforms has further unsettled the UK’s Jewish community.
“It is difficult to think of another instance in modern times when a foreign policy issue in which Britain is not directly involved has captured so much attention at home as to bring our streets to a standstill week after week, undermine many of our major institutions, and bring more MPs to Parliament than even some long-established parties — with numerous more candidates only narrowly missing out,” the Campaign Against Antisemitism said in its post-election analysis.
The sharp fall in Labour’s support among Muslim voters is undeniable. As election analyst Lewis Baston has calculated, in the 21 seats where more than 30 percent of the population is Muslim, Labour’s vote share dropped by 29 percentage points from an average 65% in 2019 to 36% in 2024. Turnout in these constituencies also fell by more than the national average.
Moreover, The Economist magazine has assessed that in Labour-held seats, the party lost approximately 0.7 percentage points from its vote share for every one-percentage-point increase in a constituency’s Muslim population
Nor is there much doubt that Labour’s stance on Gaza alienated many Muslim voters. As Baston notes, those Labour MPs who rebelled in parliamentary votes against Starmer’s decision not to back a Gaza ceasefire appear to have fared better than those who did not. That was evident, for instance, in the East End of London, which has a large Muslim population. In Bethnal Green and Stepney, Starmer loyalist Rushanara Ali saw her vote drop by nearly 40 percentage points. But, in the neighboring district of Poplar and Limehouse, rebel leftwinger Apsana Begum suffered a considerably less steep drop of 17 points.
Nonetheless, Labour still won 46 of the 50 constituencies with the highest share of Muslim voters. It avenged the humiliation it suffered in a special election in Rochdale in March by ousting George Galloway, the firebrand leader of the Workers’ Party, after just four months in office. And it took two Conservative seats in the south of England — Wycombe and Peterborough — where Muslim voters make up nearly 20% of the electorate.
But More in Common’s focus group conversations with Muslim voters over the course of this year indicate that disillusionment with Labour cannot be attributed to Gaza alone. “Conversations quickly expand to encompass broader concerns that Labour takes Muslim votes for granted and that their communities had been neglected,” the report says.
It notes that many of the districts that swung most heavily to pro-Gaza independent candidates are also the most “left behind” constituencies in the country. Most of these districts have also habitually elected Labour MPs.
Not only motivated by Gaza
Muslim voters who backed independent candidates in these areas weren’t motivated simply by Gaza. Focus groups, the More in Common think tank says, “typically had more to say about lack of opportunities, crime and the fact no one listened to them, than they do about Gaza.”
There’s no point in you tackling world peace when the area you live in is a shithole
As one Muslim voter in Rochdale graphically put it: “There’s no point in you tackling world peace when the area you live in is a shithole.” Indeed, many Muslims who abandoned Labour said that the party’s dogged reluctance to change its position on Gaza was “symbolic” of it not listening to their concerns.
At the same time, More in Common notes, while pro-Gaza independent candidates put the conflict at the heart of their campaigns, they also managed to attract a wider spectrum of support. “People voted for independent candidates who were likely to be seen as proper champions for their community who would stand up for them better than the Labour Party.”
Baston agrees that there’s a complex web of issues lying behind the drop in Muslim support for Labour. “I think Gaza was a proximate cause, but there were other things going on too; that Muslim voters had felt taken for granted by the Labour Party for some time and that this felt like an obvious, and intended, part of Labour’s 2024 strategy,” he says. “The party has had a history of relying on community leaders to broker support, but this mode of politics means that the thread of commitment to the party is easily broken.”
Losses in ‘safe seats’
Labour’s political difficulties in constituencies with a large Muslim electorate also reflected the fact that the party’s support in its safest seats fell across the board.
“Labour relied heavily on a voter efficiency strategy at this election, which meant relentlessly focusing on winning over new voters in Conservative-held seats, while worrying less about long-time Labour voters in Labour safe seats,” says Ed Hodgson, research manager at More in Common. “Electorally, this was massively successful — allowing Labour to gain 211 seats while only increasing their vote share by 1.6%.”
The price, however, was sharply reduced Labour majorities — and a handful of losses — in its own safe seats, which contain a fair share of Muslim voters. In the average Labour-held seat, the Labour Party lost 7.1% of the vote share.
Hodgson also cautions that we don’t know the impact a different Labour stance on Gaza might have had.
“What is harder to quantify is the role that Labour’s stance on Israel and Gaza played in winning over voters in seats that Labour gained from the Conservatives, from Plymouth to Portsmouth and Altrincham to Aldershot,” he says.
Those who voted Conservative in 2019 did so in part because they were worried about the prospect of a Corbyn-led government.
“Distancing the party from Corbyn’s positions, particularly on foreign policy, was an important step in Starmer’s mission of making the Labour party more appealing to Conservative swing voters,” Hodgson says.
This isn’t the first time that Muslim voters have fired a warning shot at Labour. In 2005, many revolted against Tony Blair’s government at the ballot box following Britain’s participation in the Iraq war. Five years later, with the war dropping down the political agenda and the first real prospect of a Conservative victory since 1992, Muslim support for Labour recovered strongly.
As to the future, Hodgson believes there are “multiple ways” this could play out at the next general election. Disillusioned voters might “follow the path of Rochdale,” where, having elected Galloway on a clear pro-Gaza ticket in a special election, they returned to Labour at the general election just four months later.
“It is easy to see how, in five years time, the war in Gaza may be less salient, and voters might want their parliamentary representatives to have a greater role in government working on domestic issues, rather than opposing as independent candidates,” Hodgson says. “History shows that single-issue independent candidates tend to only get one chance at winning, particularly if they are unable to deliver on bread-and-butter improvements at home.”
Hodgson also paints an alternative, less comforting, prospect for mainstream parties. If Britain’s left-leaning voters continue to fragment and more organized populist-left parties emerge, he says, it is possible to see how the correct leader could “mobilize the disaffected Muslim vote, drawing off the language and tactics used by independent candidates at this election.”
However, the ball is also in the new government’s court.
“If Labour can deliver on the policies that matter most to the public, as well as showing them that they respect their priorities, this scenario can be avoided,” Hodgson adds.
