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.
