A RAFT of new MPs have arrived in Parliament under a loose banner which threatens the Labour Party in their heartlands.
A small group of four pro-Palestine Independents have rocked up in Westminster. They are all new faces and all took their seats in areas where Labour should have hoped to win.
The election of Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed has been accompanied by no small amount of controversy.
Mohamed spoke with the Sunday National to set out his stall – and explain why he thought his success had been fuelled by more than voters’ dismay at Labour’s position on Gaza.
The new MP for Dewsbury and Batley in Yorkshire is a former IT consultant and took 41% of the vote in the constituency, while his nearest rival, Labour’s Heather Iqbal, finished with just 8,707 votes.
He blasted claims from both the right and parts of the Labour Party which have accused pro-Palestine candidates of introducing religiously motivated politics to the UK – a charge which ignores centuries of homegrown religious politics in Britain and Ireland.
“I think it’s a bit sad that two days after five Independents were elected in our country instead of welcoming a fresh perspective into politics and inviting us into the process and to work with them for the common good, the first thing that these papers and these parties are trying to do is undermine our legitimacy and credibility,” he said.
“We are here for the same reasons that they are in Parliament - because their constituents elected them and our constituents elected us. Isn’t that true democracy?”
Mohamed noted that no one called the divisive Brexit referendum “sectarian politics”.
He added: “What’s sectarian about anybody wanting peace in the world, justice in the world, fairness and equality in the world, asking for our Government not to be sending arms to countries where those arms are used to kill innocent people? What’s sectarian about that?
“The Palestine-Gaza-Israel issue is not a religious issue.”
And he said that Muslim parliamentarians like him were helping to have the community’s voice heard.
“The Muslim voice has always been there when we were voting for Labour,” he said. “But why is it that they’re only hearing that voice when we’re not voting for them?
“That’s a question for them, not us. We’re not going to sit here and apologise for being elected.
“We have as much right to sit in the chamber as every other MP in that hall. It’s quite disrespectful to the electorate and maybe insulting, too.”
In Leicestershire, Adam, who took his seat from former top Labour lieutenant Jonathan Ashworth (below), has been repeatedly criticised by his predecessor for, in his words, running a campaign of “bullying” and “intimidation”.
Ashworth appears to have offered no evidence of this harassment, though video footage went viral showing the former Leicester South MP refusing to answer campaigners who asked him to “condemn [Israeli president Benjamin] Netanyahu”.
In the clip, Ashworth can be heard calling the crowd surrounding him “bullies and loudmouths”.
One of Adam’s supporters has been charged with encouragement of terrorism and supporting a proscribed organisation. The new MP had made no comment on the case as of Friday evening.
The four swept to victory on platforms which foregrounded support for Gaza in the face of Israel’s devastating assault on Palestinians and were elected in areas with large Muslim populations.
But what do their victories mean for Labour and British politics more widely?
Professor Tom Scotto, politics professor at Strathclyde University, said the only parallel in the British Isles was the success of the anti-H-Block candidates in the Irish election of 1981, which paved the way for Sinn Fein to become a political force.
He said that while voters rarely made up their minds on matters of foreign policy, in areas taken by Independents, “the issue of Palestine was not remote”.
Scotto said: “Voters in these areas were likely to know Palestinians, feel the sting of Islamophobia, and so forth. Thus, it was an issue close to them rather than distant.
“Moreover, unlike the vagaries in many areas of their platform, Labour took a clear stance on Palestine that a plurality of voters in these constituencies found anathema.
“This gave the Independents an opening to defeat Labour candidates by campaigning on the matter.”
Dr Sean Kippin, a lecturer in public policy at Stirling University, was sceptical that the Independent caucus would be able to exert much pressure within Parliament on the Labour leadership.
He said: “Given the size of Labour’s majority, their opportunities to shape things are probably limited to two avenues. Firstly, they can use their profile and following to shape public opinion by deploying social media, sharing their contributions on their core issue of Gaza.
“Secondly, they can act as a walking example of what happens when Labour ignores their voters’ views on this important topic, by organising outside of Parliament.”
Turning his attention to Jeremy Corbyn (below), who successfully ran against his former party in Islington North, Kippin said the former Labour leader would “undoubtedly be a thorn in Starmer’s side”.
He added: “The other independent pro-Gaza MPs would be wise to follow his lead.”
Kippin also said the overall picture regarding the Muslim vote was more complicated than a simple shift away from Labour and pointed out that “voters influenced by Gaza were not all Muslim”.
“However, it clearly hurt them in a number of seats, and the slightly high-handed way that Starmer dismissed the question of what Labour should do to win back lost Muslim support suggests that he views the trade-off of pitching hard to red wall and soft Tory voters at the expense of the party’s traditional supporters, as justified by the result,” he said.
Low voter turnout across the board created “a context where a smaller number of motivated voters can have an outsized impact on an individual constituency race”.
“Of course, lowered turnout does not occur in a vacuum, and reflects a lack of enthusiasm for the options on offer, as well as the extent to which the contest was viewed as a ‘foregone conclusion’,” he added.
But Kippin also suggested that the cautious approach Starmer took in opposition - which appears to have incensed many - seems to have shifted now he has gained power.
The academic added: “One of Starmer’s first acts in office was to communicate to Benjamin Netanyahu that he should enact a ceasefire in Gaza – bringing him into line with one of their main demands.
“This, and other acts such as the appointment of Richard Hermer, suggest that Starmer’s relatively hard pro-Israel line in opposition does not fully reflect his actual views on the conflict, and the policy his government will follow.
“While Starmer is unlikely to drape himself in a Palestinian flag, a more pragmatic line is emerging, with demands for peace and an eventual two-state solution to the broader conflict likely to be at its core.”
