UK Islamists and their far-left allies seek to build on anti-Israel hostility to build a presence in the British Parliament. A single organization stands at the center of this effort—the Muslim Vote (TMV). Close observation of it offers an example of the strategies that Islamists in Western countries are adopting in their efforts to wield outsized political influence through pressure on bigger, left-wing parties and currents. The issue to be weaponized here is the strong support of the Muslim population for the Palestinian cause. The chosen instrument is a far-left party, the Workers Party, intended to be used as a cudgel to punish Labour, the larger party of the center-left, which is expected to win the election.
Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza.
George Galloway
The TMV aims to punish the Labour Party because its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, affirmed on LBC Radio in October 2023, Israel’s right to self-defense, up to and including the right to cut off water, electricity, and aid to Gaza as it hunted down Hamas terrorists and attempted to rescue the 255 hostages taken on October 7. The following month, Starmer ordered all his MPs to abstain from voting on a ceasefire resolution in Pparliament and instead to back his calls for longer “humanitarian pauses.” Fifty-six Labour MPs defied his orders, including eight shadow cabinet ministers who resigned to vote for the motion, which was defeated 293 votes to 125.
British Muslim voters’ disenchantment with Labour was apparent in a February poll of their voting intention by Survation, which found that only 43 percent said they would vote Labour in the 2024 election compared with 86 percent who did so in the 2019 general election.
What is the TMV?
The Muslim Vote (TMV) was created by Islamist groups, including known Hamas members and supporters of violence. In constituencies with large numbers of Muslims, TMV is backing candidates of the Workers Party in the election scheduled to take place on July 4, 2024, which the Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, looks set to win decisively.
TMV’s strategy is for Islamists, outraged over Labour’s support for Israel, to deprive Labour of seats. “We would love to take just 1-2 seats from the Labour heartlands – and turn a bunch of ‘walk in the parks’ [i.e. safe, easily won seats] into marginals for 2029,” the organization recently declared on X. “You may win the 2024 battle but we are here for the 25-year-war. And it’s not going to look pretty for Labour if it continues as it is today.”
TMV was established in December 2023 by a coalition of Islamist activist groups aiming to reduce Labour’s vote share in marginal constituencies by endorsing candidates of the Workers Party, founded by Hamas-friendly,far-left firebrand George Galloway. Galloway has criticized Labour and Starmer for not supporting a pro-Hamas ceasefire proposal that failed to pass in Parliament late last year.
“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza. You will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging, and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine, in the Gaza Strip,” Galloway said after winning a landslide victory in the March 2024 by-election in Rochdale, a constituency with a 36 percent Muslim population. Workers Party candidates following Galloway’s anti-Israel, anti-Labour line are standing in 150 constituencies (out of a total of 650) in the UK. Of these 150 candidates, twenty are backed by TMV.
TMV spokesperson Abubakr Nanabawa told Prospect magazine in mid-June that the organization, which bills itself as being “pro-democracy and anti-genocide,” seeks to pressure the Labour Government to pursue an “ethical foreign policy, including full support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and sanctions on the Israeli government.”
TMV’s backers include known extremists.
- Among its twenty-three founding groups is the Palestinian Forum in Britain, co-founded by Mohammad Sawalha, the chair of North London’s Finsbury Park Mosque. Sawalha was outed in 2017 as a Hamas politburo member formerly “in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in the West Bank.”
- The Muslim Association of Britain described by Michael Gove in parliament 14 March as “the British affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood,” is on the list of founders.
- MEND, a political lobbying offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain whose previous deputy secretary general signed the Istanbul Declaration in 2009 which, according to the UK government, legitimised attacks on Royal Navy vessels if they tried to stop weapons for Hamas entering Gaza, is among TMV’s founders.
- Islam 21C, a proselytising vehicle for Haitham Al Haddad, one of 46 Sunni fundamentalist scholars who signed a statement 9 October calling for the dismantling of the ‘settler colonial state’ of Israel, and for the rejection of the term “terrorism” when describing acts of Palestinian resistance” also supports TMV.
- Muhammad Jalal, a supporter who has appeared on the campaign’s social media pages, previously served as head of the now-banned, anti-Western, antisemitic Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Weaponizing UK Muslim support for the Palestinian cause
In May 2024, Labour lost a third of its vote share in the local elections in areas with Muslim majorities. Dozens of pro-Gaza activists won seats on councils around the country. Green Party candidate for Gipton and Harehills in Leeds, Mothin Ali, laid bare the cultural fault lines in Britain when he shouted, “We will not be silenced, we will raise the voice of Gaza, we will raise the voice of Palestine, Allahu Akbar!” during his victory speech.
In the May West Midlands mayoral contest, independent candidate Akhmed Yaqoob, a Lamborghini-driving, self-made criminal lawyer who has said he believes he has been chosen by Allah to “challenge the Zionist regime,” received nearly 70,000 votes. Yakoob, who has accrued 190,000 followers on TikTok, is now standing for Parliament in the seat of Birmingham Ladywood, where 53.1 percent of the electorate are Muslim, against the Shadow Justice Secretary Shabhana Mahmood. A new poll of voting intentions published on June 20 showed political novice Yakoob is now only four percentage points behind Mahmood.
TMV initially backed some of the Labour MPs who rebelled in November 2023 to support the ceasefire resolution. These MPs included Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana, a former parliamentary officer for MEND, Manchester Gorton MP Afzal Khan, a former deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West and Shadow Home Office Minister, who resigned from a previous shadow government role after it was revealed she shared a Facebook post suggesting Israel should be relocated to the USA.
In June, however, TMV announced that it would only endorse candidates of the Workers Party, aiming to unseat Labour MPs in 20 constituencies in the UK with an electorate that is more than 30 percent Muslim, out of a total of 650. In seven of those, Muslims make up more than 40 percent of the electorate. A study published 19 June by the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank, in conjunction with pollster Electoral Calculus, found that of the 220 most marginal seats in the general election, Islam is the largest minority religion in 129 of them (58.6 percent).
Despite the challenge, Labour’s Starmer is expected to become the UK’s next Prime Minister on July 4, as voters punish the Conservative Party for years of infighting over Brexit, immigration and net zero, with insurgent right-wing party Reform splitting the Conservative vote.
Conclusion
The Labour Party has attempted to placate supporters dismayed at Sir Keir’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. In June, the party declared that a future Labour government will recognise a Palestinian state as a “contribution” to a renewed peace process—irrespective of Israel’s position. “Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. It is not in the gift of any neighbor and is also essential to the long-term security of Israel,” the party declared in a manifesto. This statement in itself reflects Labour’s concern that its stance on the Gaza conflict has the potential to exact an electoral price. The emergence of TMV is evidence that Islamist activists have noted this concern and are beginning to organize in order to weaponize it. The broader failure of the British left to identify Islamism as a threat to democratic values makes this strategy possible. It remains to be seen if it will make a notable dent in Labour support in the chosen constituencies on Election Day.