RELUCTANCE TO BACK GAZA CEASEFIRE COULD HAUNT LABOUR AT UK ELECTION
▶ Former party members are set to run as independents, writes Lemma Shehadi in London
Anger over the Gaza war is bringing together independent candidates hoping to challenge the Labour Party at the UK’s next general election. Former party members and politicians are among a growing number of independents aiming to influence the next government’s policy on Palestine.
Labour’s position on Gaza has shifted since the war erupted in October last year.
Leader Keir Starmer initially refused to call for a ceasefire, causing anger among many of the party’s supporters.
But shadow foreign secretary David Lammy this week pressed Foreign Secretary David Cameron on the legality of arms exports to Israel, showing a change in focus in the opposition party.
“The war in Gaza has seen numerous allegations made of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces in the conduct of this campaign,” Mr Lammy said in his newsletter, released on Wednesday.
“Should Israel be found to be in breach of these criteria, British export licences for the armaments would have to be suspended.
“Has the Foreign Secretary received legal advice saying there is a clear risk that items licensed by the UK might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law?”
The number of independents standing for election in Britain has increased, former Labour MP Emma Dent Coad told
The National.
“It’s extraordinary how many there are now over Gaza specifically,” she said.
Ms Dent Coad quit the party in April last year and plans to run as an independent candidate in Kensington, a constituency held by Conservative MP Felicity Buchan.
“People started asking me in the street, ‘Can you stand for Parliament again? Because we need you. We’ve got no one to vote for,’” Ms Dent Coad said.
Independents have a “mutual support group”, where experienced politicians offer advice to those with no campaign experience, she said.
Divisive politics
Former journalist Paul Mason is seeking the nomination to be a Labour candidate in the next election, which could be held later this year.
He said independents and their former Labour allies should be wary of falling for the ruling Conservatives’ plan to weaken Labour support using divisive identity politics.
He accused the Conservative party of enabling a rise in racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the country.
“If multiculturalism fails, we’re finished, because we are people who live in solidarity side by side,” Mr Mason said at an event in West Kilburn, in London.
“The main problem is what the Tories are trying to do to our society.
“They’re trying to atomise it, they’re trying to divide us so that we turn on each other.”
Ms Dent Coad was excluded from Labour’s initial list of candidates in 2022 and quit the party months later. She had been a member for about four decades and served as a Labour councillor for 18 years.
“I was beginning to fear I was in the wrong place and no longer welcome, really,” she said.
In her time as an MP, she worked closely with victims of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire and communities in the area with ties to the Middle East.
They are among those to pledge support for her election campaign.
“We have a large Muslim community who I’ve always worked with and they know me, because I’ve been around a long time,” she said.
About a quarter of her constituents are Muslim, Ms Dent Coad said.
The Gaza war will form “a major part” of her campaign – but not all of it. “We have to do everything else as well,” she added.
Independent alternatives
Another independent candidate, Tanushka Marah, is a theatre director in Hove, south-east England.
She has Jordanian and Palestinian roots and was chosen to run by a collective of socialist and pro-Palestine campaigners, Brighton and Hove News reported. “I will devote myself to calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, ending the genocide and an end to occupation,” she was quoted as saying.
“I want to be the suffragette who disrupts the race between Labour and Tory – the two war and austerity parties – and stays standing, able to walk forwards.”
In Ilford North, British Palestinian Leanne Mohammed hopes to unseat Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, who has held the constituency for Labour since 2005.
The area is home to a large Muslim community and their support could affect the result at the polls, said Paul Webb, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex.
“We have to also bear in mind that there has probably been a general swing to Labour in all these places, which might increase the party’s potential lead,” he added.
An “Arab lobby” group was established in London early this month to help support British-Arab candidates in the general election.
That list includes Kamel Hawwash, chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who will run in Birmingham, and Mona Adam, a Green Party candidate in Kensington.
Helmi Alharahsheh, who leads the Jordanian Forum in the UK, plans to stand in Ealing North, which has been a Labour seat since 1997.
British-Palestinian Sameh Habeeb, who is from Gaza, announced he will also stand as an independent in the constituency, in north-west London.
He was suspended from Labour in 2018 after accusations he made anti-Semitic comments in 2010.
Splits in ‘party of hope’
Labour has faced criticism from supporters on issues beyond the Gaza war.
Divisions were evident when it lost the 2019 general election under Jeremy Corbyn, who led a party that at the time was plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism.
Some of those who backed Mr Corbyn’s leadership feel disillusioned by the direction taken by Mr Starmer, who last year suspended Diane Abbott, a key ally of Mr Corbyn.
This has led to concerns in some quarters that the party will adopt a “timid” response to national issues such as housing shortages, rising poverty and the crisis in the National Health Service.
A panel discussion in West Kilburn this week shed light on the party splits.
“I know that there will be people in the audience for whom it is unthinkable that
they would vote anything other than Labour in the coming election,” said journalist and moderator Melissa Benn.
“I also know that there are people who are going to find it impossible to put their ‘X’ in the box for Labour when the election comes.”
For Ms Dent Coad, who spoke at the event, Labour has become part of the political establishment and no longer represents the concerns of working people.
“Labour is part of the institution,” she told those in attendance.
“Labour will not fight our battles or defend our most vulnerable. Labour will not ensure our young people have a better future.
“They have dehumanised and disrespected the party membership by disempowering them.”
A new direction
She backed former members to launch a new party, but said that would not happen before the general election.
“There’s been a lot of conversations,” she said. “Another movement will come out of this, but it won’t happen yet.”
Mr Mason called on leftleaning voters to unite to push out the Conservative government, which he said had moved further right to become “fascist-curious”.
Labour needs more “radical” policies if it wants to address major national issues, said Kevin Courtney, former joint general secretary of the National Education Union.
“What’s happening is the Tories are losing an election, rather than Labour winning an election,” he said.
“It doesn’t deal with the deep crisis that I feel, that the world is going to be worse for my children, and worse for my grandchildren, unless we break with the timidity of Labour.”
There’s been a lot of conversations. Another movement will come out of this, but it won’t happen yet
EMMA DENT COAD Independent election candidate