I actually think that this vote is less about a distinct emerging Muslim vote, but more about a movement towards grass roots groups putting up Independent candidates in their local area to represent local interests.
There is already a growing trend for this in local politics. I expect that to not change.
I think one of the themes I'm seeing emerging in terms of opposition is also the narrative about the liberal elite having regained control - now this needs a bit of explaining but one of the things that came out of Trump and Brexit was this concept of the educated politician or official who didn't see things from any other viewpoint and was too arrogant to see criticism from where it came from and instead wrote it off as stupidity or bigotry. That's not simply about wokeism though. That's about education and an attitude to less well educated. The nature of this got noted as being similar to a reinvention of a class war somewhere else.
Starmer has so far appointed a number of figures that I think are probably going to go against that. Firstly Patrick Vallance as Science Minister. His pet interest isn't disease control which he's known for, but green issues. Now obviously this is an area that we need to be tackling but equally as a figure his role during COVID kind of plays into the infamous comment by Gove during the Ref about 'having enough of experts'. The ridiculous nature of the COVID restrictions hit the NW particularly hard with regional restrictions which made no sense and a sense of not understanding the reality of the workers who kept everything going.
Youve also got the return of Alan Milburn. His work in reforming the NHS was lauded but he also played a fair role in privation and PFI. So I think his return is controversial to say the least (Open Democracy have already been expressing concern about conflicts of interest too).
'Wokeism' isn't just about identity politics in my opinion. It's also about this intellectualised snobbery which is very dismissive of anything which isn't presented in a certain intellectualised way. That is also why Cass is starting to cut through - it's everything we've said here and has been ignored because it could be dismissed because it wasn't intellectualised and in a format that was acceptable to this new political class. It's all about data collection and formalisation. Which I actually support but only to a point.
If it is close minded and doesn't think to ask the crucial question of 'what are we missing? Have we covered every angle? What might not show up in our research and data? Why might it not show up?' then you miss a huge part of the issue.
Speaking to people very politically removed from me, I always find this really interesting. They have problems and issues that are valid and unaddressed, but are recognised. We have a grievance culture thats formed around it and allowed clever politicians to harness this and establish narratives that don't necessarily reflect issues but suit their agenda for power. This is because other parties have failed to adequately recognise the grievance, instead dismissing it or misinterpretating it because of a lack of capacity to listen to anything that doesn't come in 'approved language' or at a certain standard.
I still think there's been a massive lack of understanding of what the Brexit vote represented and why it happened. Those issues haven't gone away. It was never actually about Europe. Only 7% of voters voted with actual EU only related reasoning (research done shortly after the vote). It's a fascinating statistic and one that I've not really seen reflected on anywhere.