I think the very ‘homogenous’ (for want of a better word) voting on the part of Muslim population and their high level of voter turnout is an important factor here. And agreed, the Greens policies are frighteningly crazy)
Apparently in the 2019 election, 80% of all UK Muslims voted for Labour, providing 3 million of their votes they received. They won the 2024 election with 10 million votes (9,708,816 to be exact).
The author, Dr Parveen Akhtar, describes Muslim voting as a ‘bloc’ which also chimes with the many allegations of electoral fraud around religious leaders putting pressure on Muslim votes (one noteable conviction of this very hard to prove change for the Mayor of Tower Hamlets) and the reports from Gorton and Denton of a high level of ‘family voting’ - multiple people being in the voting booth with huge potential for coercion.
The disproportionate power of the ‘Muslim vote’ could sway parties. We have already seen Labour apparently bending over backwards to maintain third highly motivated Muslim support. Will they now go all in to regain those votes (pro Gaza, pro immigration, anti gay rights etc) from the Greens?
From the article:
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.
www.electionanalysis.uk/uk-election-analysis-2024/section-2-voters-polls-and-results/changing-pattern-amongst-muslim-voters-the-labour-party-gaza-and-voter-volatility/