Labour send weak message with their tardy rebuke of Ali
THE outrageous antiIsrael comments made by Labour’s Rochdale by-election candidate, and the time it has taken for Keir Starmer to disown them, reveals a deepseated problem for the party.
It does not want to alienate Muslim support, yet many of its candidates are pro-Palestine. Indeed, it took 48 hours for Sir Keir Starmer to withdraw support for Azhar Ali for, among others, peddling the disgusting conspiracy theory Israel knew in advance about the Hamas attack on October 7 but allowed it so it could retaliate in response and kill Palestinians.
Clearly, Starmer hoped his preferred candidate could weather the storm and carry on, business as usual, but then more comments were revealed – further grotesque claims about Jews and their support for Israel. Ali is popular with Rochdale’s Pakistani community (otherwise, one suspects, he would have been disavowed far sooner) and allegedly boasted about stopping Israeli flags flying from local public buildings. He knows his audience and, we can only assume, chose his words to reinforce their support.
HIS direct competition in the by-election is George Galloway, representing the Workers’ Party of Britain – a long-time supporter of pro-Muslim causes – so any Labour candidate has to outgun him in the rhetoric of pro-Palestinian protest. Indeed, up to 19 per cent of Rochdale’s population is Muslim (up 5 per cent from a decade earlier) and Galloway has claimed “there’s probably not a constituency in the whole country where there are more people concerned about Gaza than there are in Rochdale”.
If it seems strange that a British by-election might be decided on the grounds of which candidate shows the most support for Gaza, there is no doubting the strength of feeling locally. The Green Party’s candidate, Guy Otten, was forced to step down due to his past social media criticism of Palestinians and Islam. Just last November, 10 Labour MPs resigned their frontbench roles over Gaza and more than 60 local councillors nationally quit the party over the Labour leadership’s reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Sir Keir is to be commended for his measured statements on the conflict in the House of Commons, no doubt knowing he must put to bed past accusations of Labour anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s rule.
But the tide of history is against him. Many Britons were shocked at the size of pro-Palestinian marches across the country in the days immediately following the horrible massacre on October 7.
This was before Israel launched its retaliatory assault on Hamas and was, frankly, celebratory in tone. Some British Muslims and their supporters condoned the murderous attack.
Yet without doubt, the pro-Palestinian cause is perceived by many on the Left as up there with climate change and trans rights. Hence the absurdity of banners proclaiming “Queers for Gaza” when homosexuality is often rewarded with a “death sentence” in the territory.
Traditionally, pro-Palestinian politics has been embraced by the Left because it is a proxy for anti-Americanism, as the US is a strong supporter of Israel. But with the growth of large immigrant populations in Britain and elsewhere in the West – the result of uncontrolled mass migration – Muslim antipathy to Jews and Israel is fast becoming the hot-button issue for politicians on the Left.
Labour leaders such as Starmer may rightly decry antiSemitism, but many of their grassroots supporters believe it to be a party with a long history of backing Palestine against Israel.
Labour may enjoy this electoral advantage, but the time will come when openly antiIsrael parties are vying for Muslim voters.
THE pressure this exerts on left-wing politicians when it comes to drawing up policies on international affairs does not bode well.
In 2019, the Muslim Council of Britain identified 31 constituencies in the UK where the Muslim population was large enough to potentially swing the result.
Britain has been a traditionally welcoming nation, giving sanctuary to many waves of immigrants over hundreds of years, but the rapid growth of densely populated pockets of the country that do not necessarily share our tolerant values threatens to derail our political system in unintended ways.
The genie is already out of the bottle in this transformation and Labour will have to be very vigilant to mitigate its growing influence.
‘Clearly Starmer hoped Ali could weather the storm and carry on’