“Why does the party have so little to say to try to win back the trust of Britain’s Muslim voters?”
By Apsana Begum MP
Sharp losses among Muslim voters
May’s local election losses were catastrophic for Labour. Among the fallout and the clamour for new leadership, few people have taken any interest in addressing one stark fact: Labour’s sharpest losses were in the wards with the most Muslim voters.
In 2019, the year that I was elected to Parliament as the first hijab wearing MP, 80% of Muslim voters supported Labour. The erosion of this support was already evident by the General Election (GE) in 2024, and there are no signs that this trend will be reversed by the time of the next GE.
The Labour Party has lost seats where its previous supporters have switched to progressive alternatives. So why does the party have so little to say to try to win back the trust of Britain’s Muslim voters?
Gaza is only half the story
Keir Starmer’s failures over Gaza are inescapable. Britain’s Muslims, as with any community, are not monolithic, but many have said plainly that they will not vote Labour again due to complicity in genocide in Palestine. That is, however, only half the story. The other half is institutionalised Islamophobia, which has marred the party’s ability to treat Muslim voters with dignity or respect.
Back in October 2023, Muslim councillors began resigning in the wake of Keir Starmer’s comments on Israel’s right to cut off electricity, food, and water to Gaza. Many had been organising letters to the then Leader of the Opposition calling on him to support a ceasefire. But when asked for a response to the resignations, a ‘senior Labour source’ was reported to have said that the party was “shaking off the fleas”. This was a dehumanising statement. To my knowledge, that source is yet to be disciplined. Nobody has apologised to the Muslim community.
For me, it was emblematic of the disregard, and often contempt, with which some in the Labour Party have held British Muslims. And this issue long predates the genocide in Gaza.
Reports from Forde and the Labour Muslim Network
Published in 2022, a report by Martin Forde KC found that Islamophobia and anti-Black racism were not taken as seriously as antisemitism in the Labour Party, and that a “hierarchy of racism” existed in the party’s culture. After delivering his findings in the report commissioned by Keir Starmer, Forde reported that Labour refused to engage with the issues raised and had “gone silent” on him. Four years later, these issues remain unaddressed, as I know from my own experiences.
Last year, the Labour Muslim Network published a report on its newest survey of elected Labour representatives from Muslim backgrounds. Two-thirds of them believe that a hierarchy of racism still exists in the Labour Party, and over half of them do not believe that Labour takes Islamophobia seriously. And almost 40% of them have experienced Islamophobia within the Labour Party.
These are damning findings. Many of these representatives, I am sure, feel conflicted about their place in a party that they do not feel has their back. I know that I do.
The clampdown on internal dissent
In 2022, I faced a trigger ballot and a campaign of misogynistic abuse and harassment, culminating in my being signed off sick. I believe that my ordeal – including the refusal of the party leadership under Keir Starmer to support me – was due to me being elected on a socialist anti-austerity and anti-imperialist green platform, and that I have stood firmly in principle along with my constituents regardless of the consequences.
More recently, I had the Labour Whip suspended for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap. To this day, it has never been explained to me why two young Muslim women were singled out and why I was made to wait months longer than most of my other colleagues before the Whip was reinstated.
And at a national level, with Labour now in government, these internal culture issues have spilt out into national policy. This did not come as a surprise to me, as I remained vocal about my and many members’ experiences of brutal clampdowns on internal dissent.
A structural failure to address Islamophobia
In Britain now, Islamophobic hate crime is surging month on month. Muslims have long been the largest target of religiously motivated hate crime. Many of us feel that the response from this Government over the past two years has not matched the scale or urgency that’s needed, and that the Government has refused to engage with Muslims on their own terms.
For example, for a variety of reasons, the long-awaited definition of anti-Muslim hostility published earlier this year has not gained the backing of community and faith groups. Declining to use the term Islamophobia, ignoring the institutional barriers faced by Muslims, and weighing too heavily on the role of ‘intent’ in anti-Muslim discrimination, many feel that the definition is unlikely to move the dial.
The Government’s sidelining of the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest umbrella body in the Muslim community, gives the impression that Islamophobia is not an issue to be prioritised. For Labour, Islamophobia must be dealt with on the party’s terms rather than on Muslims’ own terms, through their own organisations, or with their own definitions.
It’s therefore no surprise that Muslim voters are turning to alternatives. The response of some party figures to the defections up to May, though, is telling, with Muslim voters being widely smeared as being disloyal, sectarian, or even dangerous. As the Labour Muslim Network concluded, “The party must urgently address the structural issues identified in this report or face the moral and political consequences to come.” Those consequences have now arrived. Whether or not they prove fatal is entirely up to the Labour Party and its new Leader.
- Apsana Begum is the Member of Parliament for Poplar and Limehouse – you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.
- This article is from CLPD’s annual briefing, which you can read here.
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