‘The worst election I have ever stood in’

Sectarian politics is now reality in England

Labour has won a landslide and the largest swing in British history without even increasing its vote share in England, and winning perhaps only 35% nationally. Its only significant gains in proportional terms were in Scotland, largely at the expense of the SNP, who have suffered catastrophic losses, meaning they are only 1 seat ahead of Sinn Fein, now the largest party in Northern Ireland - who are in turn 3 seats ahead of Reform, the third largest party in Britain by vote.

But these Reform MPs are - as I write - outnumbered by the five pro-Gaza independents, who won seats in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands and London in reaction to Keir Starmer’s position on Israel. Labour are down an average of 18 points in seats where the Muslim population is 20%, and in seats where that figure is above 25%, they are down 23 percentage points. While Labour lost a huge share of the Muslim vote, what is more worrying is the atmosphere in which this has taken place.

In Birmingham Yardley Jess Phillips held on by 700 votes, and in a remarkably unpleasant – I might even say upsetting, although I’ve only had three hours’ sleep - count she lamented that ‘This election has been the worst election I have ever stood in,’ as she was booed. 

‘I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence,’ she told her antagonists, and described how opponents had filmed a Labour activist in the streets and slashed her tyres, while another was screamed at by a man. She told how Jo Cox’s family had wanted to come and campaign but she couldn’t let them endure it. ‘Can you throw them out?’ she asked the authorities of her hecklers.

There were similar scenes in Birmingham Ladywood as Shabana Mahmood was heckled as she gave her speech, the returning officer pleading with the supporters of independent Ahkmed Yakoob to stop.

Yakoob was described by the Sunday Times’s Will Lloyd as ‘the one man in Britain who embodies the way our politics have changed’. He described ‘a 36-year-old defence solicitor who wears black Prada trainers, a glittering diamond watch, tinted gold-framed sunglasses and Gareth Southgate-like waistcoats. He has 195,000 followers on TikTok, a platform he understands more intuitively than 99 per cent of the politicians in this country. He speaks in clipped, brutal epigrams that sound like they are only ever a few’ and ‘The word “genocide” is never far from’ his mouth with ‘For Gaza’ printed on his leaflets.’

Labour hung on in Ladywood,  a historic constituency in England’s second city where in 1924 Neville Chamberlain very narrowly beat a rising star of the Labour Party called Oswald Mosley.

Gaza independents also narrowly lost Birmingham Hodge Hill by just 1000 votes, and Ilford North, the constituency of Wes Streeting by just 528 votes.

While the media focus was largely engaged in catching out the musing of some of Reform’s less intellectually capable candidates, this other populist revolt has been carried out in an atmosphere of anger and intimidation perhaps not seen in English elections since the days of Rotten Boroughs.

There was police intervention in Oldham last month, Naz Shah MP was abused as a ‘dirty, dirty Zionist… paid by Friends of Israel’.