Pro-Gaza Candidates Make A Dent In Labour’s UK Election Landslide
Voters in London headed to the polls on July 4 to elect members of parliament and prime minister. (Photo by Clemente Lisi)
LONDON — The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas is having reverberations across the globe.
This was the case during last Thursday’s elections in the United Kingdom. While the headlines heralded the Labour‘s landslide victory, some of the party’s losses resulted in gains for independent candidates who made Gaza a major campaign issue.
Overall, it was a spectacular win for Labour after voters across the U.K. headed to the polls on July 4. However, areas with Muslim-majority populations saw Labour candidates struggle. In a sign of anger towards Labour, five independent candidates who have been vocal in their support for Palestinians denied them an even bigger margin of victory.
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What Prime Minister Keir Starmer will do next regarding the simmering situation in the Middle East is something the U.K. Parliament will have to debate in the coming weeks and months.
In an interview shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks on U.K. radio station LBC, Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, declared that Israel had “the right” to shut off water and power to Gaza.
Those comments drew criticism from some on the left, setting up the electoral struggle that ensued nine months later when voters went to the polls to elect a new prime minister.
The center-left Labour won a massive majority in the 650-seat Parliament (taking 411 seats), while Rishi Sunak's Conservatives suffered the worst performance in the party's history. The only dent came when Labour lost five seats in areas with large Muslim populations — four to independents and one to the Conservatives.
In an area known as Leicester South, an industrial section of the U.K. located 100 miles north of London, Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth lost a nail-biter — by just 979 votes — to Shockat Adam, an independent who had made his support for Gaza a major part of his platform.
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“This is for Gaza,” Adam told supporters in his victory speech.
In Blackburn, another incumbent Labour Party candidate Kate Hollern was defeated by a mere 132 votes by independent Adnan Hussain, another Gaza supporter. In a section of East London, meanwhile, the votes on the left were split between Labour and independent Faiza Shaheen, allowing the Conservative Party’s Iain Duncan Smith to retain his seat in Parliament.
“Our vote was a combination of those appalled by how I was treated, those who took issue with having an imposed candidate who didn’t know us, those who were never going to vote Labour after Starmer’s stance on Gaza, and those that have never voted before,” Shaheen wrote on X. “Labour split the vote the moment they deselected me.”
Muslims in the U.K. have become a larger voting bloc in recent election cycles. Overall, the U.K.’s population that identifies as followers of Islam grew from nearly 5% (2.7 million) in 2011 to 6.5% (3.9 million) a decade later.
Leanne Mohamed, an independent who narrowly upset Labour’s Wes Streeting, said ahead of the vote that she decided to run after the party members had abstained on a vote regarding support for a ceasefire.
“As a Palestinian, that place is no longer for me. … The Labour Party does not represent us,” she told CNN. “My family were expelled and forced out of Palestine in 1948. My grandparents never thought they’d see something worse than that.”
Over the last few months, as fighting has intensified in Gaza and the death toll has grown, the Labour Party has changed its stance on the issue. The party — as part of its platform — recently included recognizing a Palestinian state.
But newly elected Labour candidate Zarah Sultana, who will represent Coventry South, near Birmingham, said the party’s previous positions on Gaza was a “stain on its record.”
Birmingham’s percentage of Christians (59%) is below the national average, while the Muslim share (14.3%) is above the U.K.’s average.
While it took the party some time to move “in the right direction,” Sultana said, it “took a long time to get here.”
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor of Religion Unplugged. He previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on X @ClementeLisi.