The current conflict in Gaza and Labour’s refusal to back a ceasefire has caused protests both sizeable in number and widespread in nature. The line that it doesnt matter what Labour says on the matter is specious. Firstly Britain is the former imperial power in much of the Middle East, a point not lost on many who live there and many in the UK who have relatives there. Secondly many Muslim voters are rightly concerned as they were with the Iraq War in 2003 that Labour is ignoring their concerns.
Labour HQ is reported as having checked the size of the Muslim electorate (which must be a very rough figure since you are not required to declare your religion or otherwise when registering to vote-rightly so) and concluded that only a few seats are at risk.
They have clearly forgotten the case of Hornsey and Wood Green in North London in 2005. The Constituency has an excellent progressive Mosque in Wightman Rd, N8 but not a particularly large Muslim electorate. It contains the areas of Muswell Hill and Crouch End which while historically Tory have been strongly identified with left of centre politics for the last 30 years at least.
In 2005 the Labour MP was Barbara Roche who had held the seat since 1992 defeating the late Tory incumbent Hugh Rossi. I was chair of Haringey TUC throughout this period and relations with Ms Roche were cordial enough. She was no firebrand left-winger but certainly willing to listen to Constituents.
At the 2005 Election however she fairly narrowly lost the seat to Lynne (now Baroness) Featherstone the LibDem candidate. She held the seat until 2015 when the current incumbent Catherine West was elected.
Again in my TUC role I got on well enough with Lynne, less so after the LibDems propped up the Tories from 2010. However her 2005 victory was not due to a mass surge of support specifically for the LibDems (who do have support in the Constituency today btw), not due to a large Muslim vote, because it did not exist, but very largely due to a many voters in the area strongly disagreeing with Blair over Iraq.
I don’t think this will endanger Catherine West in 2024 who again has been a decent MP on most issues. It is however a warning to Starmer that backing wars is a lot more electorally unpopular than he seems to think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsey_and_Wood_Green_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Leave a Reply