Labour Needs the Muslim Vote to Stabilise its 'Sandcastle Majority'– Here's How it Wins it Back
Labour Needs the Muslim Vote to Stabilise its 'Sandcastle Majority'– Here's How it Wins it Back
From press regulation to definitions of extremism and policies towards Gaza, Sufyan Gulam Ismail argues there is a lot Keir Starmer's party can do to rebuild its historically most loyal constituency
The 2024 General Election brought the Labour Party to power for the first time in over a decade. Yet even a cursory look at the numbers of votes accrued by Labour and the other parties is enough to make one thing obvious: Keir Starmer is sitting on top of a very precarious house of cards.
Despite his majority of 170 seats, there is still a real possibility that Labour will face a steep uphill struggle to hang onto the gains made when they next go to the polls in a by-election or General Election. To avoid being forced up against the ropes, especially by an increasingly pugnacious Nigel Farage, Labour will need to consider ways to broaden its voter base. Let’s look at some key facts.
Labour won with the lowest vote share that a single party has had coming into government. The party’s vote share was around 34%, up just two points from its 2019 defeat. Longtime Labour MPs have presciently warned that in many of the areas where Labour did secure victory, it was with narrow margins of victory. Turnout was also well down compared with recent elections, falling by eight points to 60%, the second lowest turnout ever in a UK election since 1885. Only the 59% in 2001 was lower. One would fairly expect that with a better, slicker opposition at the next election, the turnout, especially on the right, may well be considerably greater.
Reform came in second place in about 98 seats and within 5,000 votes of winning within roughly 10 of those. Moreover, in over 170 of the Conservative seats lost, the Reform vote was greater than the margin of the Conservatives' defeat. Support for Reform rose more sharply, by 16 points, in seats that the Conservatives were defending – twice as much as in seats Labour were defending. Should Reform UK continue to garner support, especially if it agreed to some kind of coalition with the Tories, then Labour could find itself in trouble in multiple constituencies.
There is also evidence that voters are gravitating toward smaller parties. In the 2019 General Election, over 75% of the popular vote went to Labour and the Tories, whereas in 2024 they secured only 60% of the vote, whereas smaller parties took home around 30.4%, with Reform (14.3%) and Liberal Democrats (12.1%) leading among them. A combination of this voter mobility to smaller parties coupled with the ‘Reform effect’ really could prove challenging for Labour in all elections from this point onwards.
The biggest factor in Labour’s success was the unprecedented collapse of the Tory vote, a groundbreaking 20 points nationally. Despite the extraordinary odds in Labour’s favour coming in to this election, notably a shambolic Tory party, a succession of weak Tory leaders, an NHS on the brink of collapse and the cost of living and energy prices rocketing, they still did not manage to hit the heights scaled by Tony Blair achieved in any one of his three election victories. Tony Blair’s 419 seats won in 1997 were not surpassed by Starmer’s Govt which fell short at 412. To add insult to injury, even the oft-vilified Jeremy Corbyn took home 40% of the vote in 2017 which is still higher than the 35% Starmer’s Labour polled in the recent election.
All of this has led some Labour MPs to warn Starmer that he has a “sandcastle majority that will have a fair number of big tides coming its way”.
However, Labour can, and should, turn its house-of-cards majority into a solid foundation for electoral success by tapping into a constituency of potentially millions of Muslim voters who are looking for a government that listens to their concerns.
Winning Back the Most Loyal Constituency
Often in life, we make mistakes, lose friends, money, credibility and more. Our natural instinct is to revert back to our ‘strongholds’ and shore up support there. A bit like a business going back to its proven core product/consumer base in times of financial instability. In this context, studies show the Muslim community’s loyalty to Labour has historically been immense and can easily account for 50-60 election seats in an average election as per data from Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) and the Muslim Vote. But this constituency was heavily conflicted in 2024 over giving Labour its vote. Labour can, and in fact should as a matter of at least maintaining, if not expanding its parliamentary majority, consider how it can go about reestablishing itself as the party of choice among British Muslims.
There is little doubt that this will be a difficult task. In the eight months leading up to the election the party’s moral equivocation on the genocide in Gaza caused some significant damage to Muslims’ trust in Labour. Keir Starmer’s October 2023 LBC interview in which he said that Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from the beleaguered people of Gaza has seared itself into the collective memory of British Muslims.
Muslim voters punished Labour for this in the General Election, with some research showing that in the 21 seats where more than 30% of the population is Muslim, Labour’s vote share dropped by 29% from an average of 65% in 2019 to 36% in 2024. Labour stalwarts like Jonathan Ashcroft were toppled from what was assumed to be a safe seat in South Leicester by a ‘Gaza solidarity’ candidate, Shockat Adam. A campaign group called The Muslim Vote (TMV) helped to drive the grassroots effort to slash Labour’s majority over its Gaza stance, which appears to have been successful in areas like Bethnal Green and Stepney, Birmingham Yardley and others. By all accounts, TMV appears to have every intention of continuing that drive into 2025 and beyond.
Labour should of course care about this as a matter of principle. The genocide in Gaza is nothing short of evil, and the representatives of the British people should not be complicit in it through words of support or silence in the face of it. Moreover, while the genocide is by no means solely a matter of concern to British Muslims, there is little denying that remains very important to them. Polling showed that about 44% of Muslims held Gaza as one of the top five most critical electoral issues. Labour needs to show this electorally important and growing constituency that it takes their concerns seriously, and take winning back the hearts and minds of Muslims as a matter of realpolitik and electoral strategy, considering the threats that it faces going into future elections.
So how can Labour do this? There are nine key policy areas that it should embrace to make this happen.
Civil Society Groups
Labour should not continue the strategically shortsighted Conservative policy of refusing to engage with mainstream Muslim civil society groups. Groups like The Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Engagement & Development and Muslim Association of Britain have decades of experience working with community leaders and public authorities to tackle Islamophobia and strengthen community cohesion, and as a result have widespread support among and across British Muslim communities These bodies have organically grown out of British Muslim life and are authentic representations of what is a very diverse community. This is not something that can be artificially created, which is why the Government should avoid a policy of cherry-picking preferred leaders to work with, or creating its own bodies that command no recognition or legitimacy among British Muslims.
Racial and Religious Hatred Law
Labour should resolve the deeply problematic legislative imbalance between the protections given on grounds of race versus those afforded to religious groups under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006. Currently, a person is rightly protected against abusive, insulting or threatening words or behaviour that target race. On the other hand, a religious person is only protected from threatening words or behaviour and even then, only if an intention to stir up religious hatred can be proven – which is a hugely lofty threshold to cross for prosecution. This gives a free pass to bigots to use abusive or insulting words or behaviour toward someone because of their religious identity. The urgency to address this legislative gap is now even more pressing following the recent far-right riots, which were characterised by the very practices of abusing and insulting Muslims. When it comes racial hatred, prosecutors need to establish that there was a likelihood that the offence would whip up hatred, but when it comes to religious hatred, there is the added condition that it must be proven that the perpetrator had the intention to do so.
Defining ‘Extremism’
Labour must rescind the highly politicised definition of extremism introduced by the last government and remove mainstream Muslim civil society groups from being judged against it. This process was known to be the brainchild of former Secretary of State for Levelling Up and Communities, Michael Gove, who has a well-documented past of working for right-wing think tanks that have been accused of espousing Islamophobia, including by their own founders in the case of the Henry Jackson Society. Gove claimed that the Muslim groups were added because of their “Islamist orientation and views”.
Yet, all those groups added are apolitical and do not promote or advance any such ideology. Take for example Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND). The group was founded with one overarching goal: to fight Islamophobia in Britain. It was not created to champion any ideology or political group, and there is no evidence that it ever has. The work of groups like MEND should be understood as fitting within the long and honourable tradition of protecting and advancing the citizenship of minority groups. Far from undermining our institutions, their work strengthens them by ensuring that rights and freedoms are applied equally to all, and not on the basis of race or religious affiliation. This should be celebrated, not demonised.
Press Regulation
Muslim communities need to see greater press regulation. Studies have shown that for every single neutral or positive mention of Muslims in the press there are 21 negative references. Certain parts of the media – especially the likes of the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and GB News – have played a major role in spreading Islamophobia, arguably helping to set the stage for the far-right riots that recently rocked our country. Yet, as it stands, Muslims are blocked from reporting media demonisation of their communities by Clause 12 of the Editor’s Code of Practice, which does not apply to group-based discrimination, only individuals. This needs to change. Labour must also commit to the full implementation of the Royal Charter on Press Regulation, which includes at long last triggering Section 40 of the 2013 Crime and Courts Act, a critical tool in holding the press to account for its content and conduct.
Protect Mosques, Schools and Community Centres
Funding to protect mosques, Muslim schools and other community centres should be enshrined in law. Further, in order to ensure that measures to uproot Islamophobia are effectively implemented across Government, the Prime Minister’s office should have a Special Advisor on Islamophobia. One important way that the government should demonstrate to Muslim communities that it is serious about protecting Muslims from attacks, especially on the heels of the recent far-right riots, is to provide funding for organisations like the Islamophobia Response Unit, an independent charity dedicated to tackling Islamophobia in the UK.
Abandon the Failed Prevent Strategy
It is high time to finally abandon the failed Prevent strategy, as well as other flawed counter-terror measures. The volume of evidence that exists in the form of independent academic studies and landmark human rights reports showing that Prevent both discriminates against Muslim communities while failing to prevent extremism, is overwhelming. Therefore, as human rights groups have long pointed out, Prevent has no legitimacy, and should be scrapped. A review must also be carried out into other counter-terror laws that have been identified as counterproductive failures, especially Schedule 7 powers, which give authorities the right to stop people at ports and borders without reasonable suspicion. Often, this has resulted in innocent people being stopped and subject to degrading treatment simply for being perceived as Muslim.
Halal Student Loans
Labour should implement the commitment of the last government to legislate Halal student loans. Statistics show that many thousands of Muslim would-be university students forego higher education due to the lack of alternatives to interest-based student finance. It is unfitting for a twenty-first century democracy that some of its citizens feel they are unable to seize the same opportunities as other groups simply because of their beliefs.
Faith-friendly Workspaces
Through new guidance, employers across the UK should be encouraged to facilitate workspaces that are faith-friendly, which would include the provision of prayer spaces for the country’s growing Muslim population. It’s not only Muslim employees who would benefit from this; studies show that contemplative practices like prayer and meditation boost cognitive and social skills, which could increase employee productivity to the benefit of employers. Employers should also be reminded that employees are protected from religion-based discrimination under the Equality Act of 2010 (article 10) and the 1998 Human Rights Act (article 9), which protects their right to “manifest” their religious beliefs. The right to manifest one’s religion is understood as meaning the right to express one’s religious beliefs publicly and/or privately through speech, acts of worship, as well as through wearing certain symbols and garments.
Coherent Policy on Gaza
Finally, and in what will perhaps be Labour’s greatest test, the party must adopt a coherent policy toward the genocide in Gaza, which places human rights at its core. We should of course expect no less from Keir Starmer, considering that he is a human rights barrister.
· The Prime Minister must publicly call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
· Labour must urgently implement its manifesto pledge to recognise the state of Palestine, and not delay this over concerns about international optics as some reports have suggested it is doing.
· Although Labour has repeatedly called for the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza to be returned home safely, it should do the same for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held illegally in Israeli jails.
· Labour should uphold international law by calling for the removal of all illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
· The party should commit to not reintroducing the last Government’s highly controversial anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Bill, which campaigners across the country recognised as an acute threat to freedom of expression and assembly.
· Finally, the UK should follow the lead of nations like Belgium and the Netherlands in suspending arms sales to Israel.
Through this suite of policies, the Labour leadership can show British Muslims that it is taking a different position toward them compared to Governments of the past. It can show them that it takes their right to be properly represented and heard seriously, and through doing so, it may well fortify its electoral foundations and turn its sandcastle majority into a castle of stone.
Sufyan Gulam Ismail is a British Entrepreneur and Philanthropist