Dr Parveen Akhtar
Political Scientist specialising in British Politics and Muslim political participation. She has previously held research positions at Aalborg University; University of Amsterdam; Science Po Paris and the Institute for Human Sciences in Austria. She has taught in the UK (University of Birmingham; University of Bristol, Bradford University and Aston University); in Pakistan (Lahore University of Management Sciences, Karachi School of Business and Leadership); and, in South Korea (University of Seoul).
Email: p.akhtar2@aston.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 2: Voters, polls and results
13. Forecasting a multiparty majoritarian election with a volatile electorate (Dr Hannah Bunting)
14. The emerging infrastructure of public opinion (Dr Nick Anstead)
15. A moving target? Voter segmentation in the 2024 British General Election (Prof Rosie Campbell)
16. Don’t vote, it only encourages them? Turnout in the 2024 Election (Prof Charles Pattie)
17. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 General Election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)
18. Gender and vote choice: early reflections (Dr Ceri Fowler)
19. Changing Pattern amongst Muslim voters: the Labour Party, Gaza and voter volatility (Dr Parveen Akhtar)
20. Religion and voting behaviour in the 2024 General Election (Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, Dr Stuart Fox)
21. Failure to connect: the Conservative Party and young voters (Dr Stephanie Luke)
22. Youthquake for the progressive left: making sense of the collapse of youth support for the Conservatives (Prof James Sloam, Prof Matt Henn)
23. Values in the valence election (Prof Paula Surridge)
24. Tactical voting: why is it such a big part of British elections? (Thomas Lockwood)
The number of Muslims voting for the Labour Party dropped significantly in the 2024 General Election. From Birmingham to Bradford, London to Leicester, the party lost seats and saw majorities fall dramatically. Once safe constituencies became marginals.
Labour, nevertheless, won by a landslide. The party now holds 411 seats in the House of Commons, more than doubling the 202 seats they had won at the last election in 2019. Still, one of the key sub-plots of the election has been the relationship between the Labour Party and once loyal British Muslim voters.
There are currently 3.9 million Muslims in the UK, according to the 2021 census making up 6.5% of the population, 1.2 million more than in 2011 census.
A growing population, its electoral significance is amplified because Muslims are likely to live in concentrated urban areas, which in the UK’s first-past-the-post system means that in core constituencies they can impact who wins.
Traditionally Muslim communities have supported the Labour Party. They have viewed the party as being sympathetic to the rights of ethnic minorities and the working class, groups that most Muslims, though not all, fall into.
Whilst not all Muslims vote Labour and not all Muslim parliamentarians are affiliated with the Labour Party, it is still nevertheless the case that most Muslims see the Labour Party as their natural home.
At the local council level there are, according to Labour Muslim Network, over 500 Muslim Councillors across the UK and over 75% them are members of the Labour Party. In the 2019 General Election, over 80% of Muslims voted for the Labour Party.
Signs that the special relationship between Labour and Muslim voters was under strain emerged earlier in the year at the May 2024 local council, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections across England and Wales.
Here the Labour Party support was down by eight points on the previous year in wards with Muslim populations of over 10%. Crucially, Labour lost control of Oldham council and lost their deputy leader in Manchester.
If Labour had hoped this was a local level protest vote which would not be replicated in the General Election, then it was a serious miscalculation. Local election losses were in fact amplified at the General Election where Labour lost 5 previously safe seats to independent candidates standing on a pro-Gaza platform in Leicester South, Dewsbury and Batley, Blackburn, Islington North, and Birmingham Perry Bar.
In other safe constituencies, the swing away from Labour was substantial and MPs were returned with dramatic declines in their majorities, including Wes Streeting, who won in Ilford North by just over 500 votes. The new Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood saw her share of the vote in Birmingham Ladywood decline by 40%.
In constituencies with the highest number of voters identifying as Muslim, Labour’s share of the vote fell sharpest. In the 21 seats where more than 30% of the population is Muslim, Labour’s share dropped by 29 percentage points from an average 65% in 2019 to 36% in 2024.
The relationship between Muslim voters and the Labour Party has been tested before on foreign policy during the 2003 War in Iraq. In a parliamentary by-election held in 2003, in northwest London (Brent East) the Liberal Democrats overturned a Labour parliamentary majority of 13,000 votes.
At the time, the Muslim population of Brent – over 12% of the Borough – voted against Labour because of military intervention in Iraq. The by-election represented a milestone; it was the first time that British Muslims had used a bloc vote at parliamentary level. This was repeated nine months later, when Muslims helped to overturn a 12,000 majority in a by-election in Leicester South, handing the constituency once again to the Liberal Democrats.
Exactly two decades later and, following a different Middle Eastern conflict, the constituency provided one of the shocks of election night when Jon Ashworth, a high-profile member of Labour’s shadow cabinet lost to the Independent pro-Gaza candidate Shockat Adam.
In the 2003 local elections too, the Labour Party suffered big electoral losses across the country and in places like Birmingham with a sizable Muslim demographic, the party lost control over the local authority due, in part, to a ’Baghdad backlash’.
The extent of the backlash was reflected in the success of the Respect Party in the 2005. Respect: The Unity coalition was created in January 2004 out of the momentum of the anti-war movement. Though now disbanded, in its heyday, Respect had an MP and several local councillors.
By 2019, most Muslims had returned to the Labour Party. Now, the relationship is strained once more. In research interviews and focus groups I have conducted with Muslim voters across the UK, many are disillusioned with the Labour Party over its handling of the crisis in Gaza.
Whilst older Muslim voter are more likely to stick with the party they have always voted for, younger Muslims are much more electorally mobile, using the ballot box to reward and punish MPs and political parties based on their policies rather than voting out of party or identity loyalty. This trend of voter volatility is reflected beyond young Muslim voters and evidenced by the turn in fortunes of smaller political parties.
A version of this article was previously published in The Conversation under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence: https://theconversation.com/election-2024-labours-gaza-stance-has-driven-many-muslim-candidates-to-stand-as-independents-230938
