There is a very interesting Guardian article by Owen Jones that has gone up. It’s not that Mr Jones’s views on how better Corbyn was than Starmer or that the party is in some degree of trouble that are interesting, it’s when he admits what many people who may have voted Labour back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, but will do so no longer, have believed for years. Owen Jones has made the admission that for the Labour Party, Britain’s Muslims now make up the core vote for the party.

It appears that Owen Jones, that stalwart of the middle class Labour Left has said what many of us have said about Labour,. which is that it has become a Muslim focussed sectarian party and not a party for British workers in general regardless of that worker’s skin colour or belief. It’s one thing for a Labour Party opponent to say something like this and many have, but it is quite another for someone like Jones who is attached to the Labour Party like a limpet sticks to a rock to say something like this.

The context of what Mr Jones is saying is based on Labour’s prospects in the upcoming Batley and Spen by-election. Owen Jones says that it’s likely that Labour will hold it, just, but Labour faces a big threat from George Galloway who is standing for the Workers Party and has a track record for attracting Islamic votes. Strange as it may seem, I do find myself agreeing with Owen Jones, not something that happens often, but especially about the issues of the Labour Party being in big trouble and it now seeing Muslims as the party’s core vote.

Owen Jones said:

Some Labour councillors – who are keen not to be identified publicly, fearing being denounced for disloyalty – claim that on a number of streets that delivered overwhelming support for their party in the 2019 general election, residents now hurl abuse at their canvassers. George Galloway joining the race at the end of May for the Workers Party of Britain sent tremors through Labour’s campaign. One of Britain’s most divisive politicians, he has several comprehensive defeats stuffed in his belt – most recently in Scotland – but also two astonishing victories over Labour in east London in the 2005 general election and in the 2012 Bradford West byelection, just a few miles down the road from Batley.

There are over three million Muslims in Britain, and in the 2019 election, an astonishing 86% of Muslim voters said they backed Labour. They are core Labour voters. This is an important point to emphasise, because if Keir Starmer’s party is defeated here – though that is far from certain – then a narrative will still form that this is a freakish, unrepresentative result. But a failure to acknowledge British Muslims as key pillars of Labour’s now crumbling electoral coalition is fuelling the crisis for the party.

The Owen Jones article continued with statements about how British Muslims feel like they’ve been ‘treated like dirt’ by Labour (oh yeah and how badly do you think the rest of us have been treated by Labour over the years?) and that they are angry about Starmer pulling out of an Islamic ‘iftar’ celebration when Starmer found out that one of the attendees was a supporter of boycotting Israel. Mr Jones also states that there is resentment that the sister of murdered MP Jo Cox has been parachuted into the seat to be a candidate by Labour HQ. It appears that local Muslims would rather one of their community had been picked to fight the seat rather than the choice of Labour central office.

This fight at Batley and Spen is going to be very rough and harsh. Labour is going to come into a lot of doorstep criticism for their choice of candidate, a choice that looks to some emotionally manipulative and cynical. It’s also likely that Galloway will pick up a lot of Islamic votes. In addition, if local non Muslims walk away from Labour primarily because they perceive that Labour is now a sectarian Islamic party in all but name and instead vote Tory, then I believe that there is a fair chance that the Tories could take the seat. This chance is increased due to the withdrawal of some of the smaller centre right parties that may have siphoned votes away from the Tories thereby allowing Labour to hold the seat. Labour could be in for a pretty difficult time and it will be one of their own making. Labour abandoned the aspirational working classes, the hard grafting Hindus and Sikhs, the Jews and upwardly mobile Black voters, among others, in favour of what they saw as a reliable voting bloc made up of Muslims. If this bloc now deserts Labour then the party is in serious trouble. It will become a party that represents nobody but themselves and maybe a few middle class Leftists and ‘woketards’.

Such an outcome would not only be bad for the Labour Party but also very bad for democracy. A political system such as exists in the UK relies on there being at least two potential governing parties all with wide appeal. In this system the Opposition can hold the Government to account in the House of Commons and even if the maths in the chamber doesn’t mean that the opposition parties can defeat the government in Commons votes. Having at least two or three big well supported and broadly supported parties does ensure that matters that worry people can be raised in the chamber by the opposition. However for this system to work properly the Opposition needs to have broad appeal among the electorate. Sadly for Labour this is not the case.

Labour’s vote among the general population appears to be shrinking and it doesn’t have the same moral force either in the Commons nor among the public that it once had. Although I’m politically conservative, I do not want to see a one party state where the Conservative Party wins everything every time, that would be little more than an elected dictatorship, which is why I do want to see a functioning opposition by a party that has broad support and is not sectarian. Unfortunately at least for the foreseeable future, Labour is in too much of a mess to be able to get that broad support from the public. Britain’s Parliament needs an opposition, if not made up by Labour then hopefully someone else. Most specially we need an opposition party that represents all Britons no matter what our skin colour or what deity we follow or not. We don’t need a sectarian party or religious or communal sectarian politics on the mainland of Britain as this will surely end up with political balkanisation . We don’t need Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Flying Spaghetti Monster parties, what we need are parties that will either govern or oppose in the name of ALL Britons.