Britain’s Muslim and Jewish voters tell Count that they will vote based on how major UK political parties have approached the Israel-Palestine conflict since 7 October, at home and abroad
Sumaya, a 26-year old technology sector employee, has always voted Labour. At the forthcoming general election next month, however, she might abstain for the first time, because of the party’s attitude towards the war in Gaza.
For Sumaya, things changed after the October 7 Hamas attack when Labour leader Keir Starmer repeatedly stated that Israel has the right to defend itself regarding its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Since then, she believes the party hasn’t done nearly enough to hold Israel accountable for the suffering it has inflicted on Palestinian civilians over the past seven months.
Her views, she says, are far from unique in her Muslim community in west London.
“I think the Labour party has completely alienated its Muslim voters,” she says.
According to national polls, the key issues in the UK’s general election are the economy, immigration, and the struggling National Health Service. For many British Muslims and Jews, though, the way Labour and the Conservatives have responded to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war will ultimately dictate for whom they decide to vote.
In February, a poll by Survation and the Labour Muslim Network found that 86 per cent of Muslim voters backed Labour in the previous election. Only 43 per cent said they would vote for them again, and 23 per cent were undecided.
This drop in Muslim support for Labour has swung recent electoral outcomes. In Rochdale, a historically Labour-leaning town where about 30 per cent of inhabitants are Muslim, George Galloway from the British Workers’ Party won a by-election held in February. The campaign of the divisive politician was dominated by a strong pro-Palestine stance and unsparing criticism of Labour’s position on Gaza. Two weeks prior to the election, when Labour proposed an amendment to a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire, Galloway remarked that the names of the party’s MPs were “dripping in blood”.
In neighbouring Oldham, where around 24 per cent of people are Muslim, Labour lost control of the council in the May local elections after ceding six seats to independents. While local Labour leader Arooj Shah denied that Starmer’s position on the crisis in Gaza was to blame, the party’s national campaign coordinator acknowledged that the party’s response to the war was “a factor”.
Ahead of the general election, campaign group The Muslim Vote is urging Muslims to keep Gaza in mind, especially in constituencies where they could shake up results, such as Bethnal Green and Bow, Birmingham Ladywood, and Leicester South. They are set to release a list of candidates they endorse on foreign policy, the NHS, and education.
According to Dr Andrew Barclay, a research associate in the Department of Social Policy at the University of Oxford, the political relevance of overseas conflicts to British Muslims is nothing new.
“The only real sort of wavering that we’ve seen historically in Muslim support for the Labour party was related to foreign policy,” he says. “So following the Iraq War, and following the war in Afghanistan, there was a fairly measurable dip in how well candidates did in constituencies with large Muslim populations, but that seemed to revert back to tide pretty quickly after that, as recently as 2010.”
Dr Barclay believes this pattern is probably due to “a feeling that major political parties and the British government are happy to not support Muslims around the world”.
The support for Labour is not waning only in the Muslim community, but in the Jewish diaspora too.
For 22-year-old Hannah Silverman from Elstree in Hertfordshire, where around 36 per cent of residents share her Jewish identity, circumstances at home are influencing how she’s planning to vote.
In 2023, the Community Security Trust, a charity that offers security advice to the UK’s Jewish Community, documented a record number of antisemitic incidents, up 147 per cent from the year before. Approximately two-thirds of the total occurred after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October.
In October 2020, a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded that Labour was responsible for “unlawful” acts of discrimination over antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The watchdog highlighted three violations of the Equality Act: political interference in antisemitism complaints, failure to provide sufficient training to those handling these complaints, and harassment.
While Silverman has been wary of the Labour party’s reputation for antisemitism since the EHRC’s report, rising anti-Jewish hate since 7 October has made voting for the party a no-go:
“As a person who’s more left-leaning, I won’t be voting Labour sadly because I just can’t for my own safety.”
Silverman isn’t alone. Dr Barclay explains that “evidence suggests that most British Jews feel levels of this kind of threat of hostility from the political left, whereas previously they probably would have felt it more from the political right”.
“You do see big spikes in domestic antisemitism [against] some Jewish diaspora whenever Israel is involved in some sort of conflict, so it raises this salience of antisemitism in Britain whenever these things happen,” he adds.
However, how Muslim and Jewish communities relate the Israel-Hamas war to domestic politics is not clear-cut. A decline in support for the Tories in Silverman’s home borough of Hertsmere in the May 2023 local elections indicated that Starmer’s pledges to eradicate antisemitism in his party may have struck a chord with Jewish voters.
Haris, a 22-year-old software engineer from Small Heath; an overwhelmingly Muslim area of Birmingham, is also unconvinced that Labour has fully lost its Muslim support base:
“They know what’s on the other side, and they know the other people that probably win are the Tories, and they don’t want a Tory government.”
Feature Image: Pro-Palestine protest in London, 2024. Photo credit: Sumaya.