THERE’S nothing funny about electoral corruption but, my, did I chuckle mightily at Reform UK’s bellyaching over the Green Party’s manipulation of the Gorton and Denton Muslim block vote.
Nigel Farage’s faux fury over ‘family voting’ was apparently of greater national import than Iranian ICBMs heading in the general direction of British citizens or serving military personnel. Hearing him harp on about it, I could only wonder where Nigel’s been for the last 20 years. Has he even heard of the Muslim rape gangs and the various goings-on in that sect?
Back in 2006 Nigel was still the EU’s chief clown and busy taking over the leadership of UKIP. Had he visited my humble Dewsbury back yard he could have had a 20-year head start on the realpolitik of Muslim voting and the street-life nuances of being a white Conservative councillor trying to canvass voters in a 99 per cent Muslim district.
Physical confrontation and screamed threats, for one; gangs of young men in flash cars who slow down as you walk narrow, terrace streets, giving you a prolonged death stare. And that’s before you get to the Taleem Centre polling station, where Labour members stand at the entrance instructing arriving residents where to place their X (backed up by the same ‘public service’ inside).
Councillor Jonathan Scott was one of three Tories representing the ward, the other two being Muslim men. He was challenged by Labour’s Masood Ahmed, who, apart from being both a local unknown and political novice, barely spoke any English. In the event a permanent police presence was required at the Taleem Centre but it mattered little.
Scott was ousted by virtue of a staggering 100+ per cent swing in the vote. Inexplicable? Well, it was unless you knew what was actually going on. Details of such commonplace corruptions featured in Professor Ted Cantle’s celebrated Home Office report on community cohesion.
That was nothing compared to what the same ward witnessed in 2012. Local postmaster Abdul Patel was fighting the seat for Labour. For context, the wider Patel clan has fingers in every political, cultural, religious, judicial and economic pie in the district. The massive Markazi Masjid (mosque), European HQ of the evangelical Tablighi Jamaat cult, was led from its foundation by Imam Hafiz Patel, at whose funeral (janazah) in 2016 I was the only white face among about 8,000 mourners. That was an interesting day.
Back to Abdul Patel and his interesting take on canvassing. He went door-to-door collecting people’s postal votes – well, he was the postmaster! He even took family members along with him when there was, shall we say, a reluctance to comply. One young woman complained to the police, who promptly sent along a Muslim officer to have a chat with her. She withdrew the complaint.
It must have been embarrassing for the Kirklees Council returning officer when sacks full of postal votes landed in the office, all in favour of Abdul (I can’t absolutely confirm that they were all in the same handwriting). What to do? At least the police duly investigated, after a fashion, and three meaningless police cautions were issued although Councillor Abdul Patel continued to serve for several more years.
That wasn’t his last moment in the political spotlight. He and another former Labour councillor ran a private Muslim burial ground. There was much local concern when it emerged that fees varied dependent on family affiliations, but also that there was no formal record of who was buried where (that’s illegal, by the way). In addition, some nosy journalist uncovered the fact that the two men had been underpaying the land lease fees by tens of thousands of pounds over many years.
Kirklees council’s explanation? Well, staff felt uncomfortable pursuing such upstanding members of the Muslim community. As you do. And people wonder why the Muslim rape gangs had decades of police, political and social services softly-softly treatment? I don’t believe the money was ever recovered.
By the time the Electoral Commission was ripping into Kirklees in 2014, the authority was busy patting itself on the back for avoiding Rotherham/Rochdale-type Muslim rape gang scandals. They congratulated themselves too soon, because I think I’m right in saying the district’s conviction rate is now the highest in the country. And still the arrests come.
Back to Gorton and Denton and the successful hoodwinking – for now – of the local Muslim vote. It was the perfect recipe, the most hated government in history matched with a brazenly deceitful gang of Green opportunists (no mention of legalising class A drugs or prostitution, let alone their saintly environmental mantras) sweetened by a mass Muslim vote that obeys either the mosque or the man of the house. Stir in a devious and concerted black-ops campaign to defy Farage’s man and hey presto!
Can the Greens hope to repeat this formula across the nation? I can’t see it, although the dispiriting 47 per cent turnout should give them hope. But rather than focus on Farage when targeting such demographically ‘interesting’ seats, they might care to look over their shoulder at the rise of the Muslim independents.
The Tories probably thought they were being clever when they gerrymandered the new seat of Dewsbury and Batley for the 2024 election, lumping most of the local Muslim Labour voters into one pot and protecting more conservative nearby constituencies. Pro-Palestinian Independent Iqbal Mohamed thrashed the rest out of sight.
Hannah Spencer should enjoy her brief time in Parliament because I suspect that next time around, the setting for last week’s party political dramas could be as wildly different again.
