THE Henry Jackson Society is one of today’s more worthy British institutions, defending as it does liberal democracy and what it terms ‘real’ human rights – presumably as opposed to a 6ft 3in bearded confused-dot-com’s imagined right to hike up his skirt in a ladies’ loo. It’s no surprise then that one of HSJ’s latest studies focuses on ‘Forecasting the Muslim Sectarian Wave’. It’s particularly topical as the nation heads to the polling booths today. Or not, in too many cases.
The study is by HSJ’s resident expert in all things Islam, Emma Schubart. It’s a data-driven deep dive into England’s 2024 local election results and is sub-titled ‘Ward-Level Predictors of Electoral Success’. With respect to Ms Schubart, a more fitting appendix might have been Teaching Grandma to Suck Eggs. It abounds with explanations, extrapolations and algebraic formulae, but ultimately and hugely unexpectedly (not) it arrives at a few basic and predictable conclusions. They are:
1) The bigger the local ward population of Muslims, the higher likelihood of electing a ‘sectarian Muslim candidate’;
2) The voter turnout from within Muslim communities is significantly higher than other faith/cultural identity groups;
3) As with the previous two categories, the proportion of Muslims aged under 30 who exercise their franchise puts what we might call indigenous voting groups to shame;
4) Outcome? In appealing to their voter base, fixing potholes or arguing for a new playground comes a distant second to supporting causes in Gaza or Kashmir which, frankly, a local councillor doesn’t have much impact on.
Ms Schubart’s work is admirably detailed and forensically calculated in terms of identifying what constitutes a Sectarian Muslim, and it’s not all about the good old chants of Allahu Akbar. For instance Green Party leader Zack Polanski would qualify for the label, but former Conservative Home Secretary Sajid Javid wouldn’t.
In finishing the report however I couldn’t help but wonder how much time and money was spent studying all the results from 1,902 local authority wards, of which only 66 met the author’s criteria, when the most important, almost throwaway line, resides at the very end of the paper. The attitudes of Muslim under 30s ‘appears to align with a broader “radicalisation of youth” concern already identified by . . . security and counter-terrorism’.
Really? It’s more than a decade since Dewsbury teens Talha Asmal and Hassan Munshi joined ISIS, Asmal blowing himself up in Iraq. Munshi, whose elder brother Hammad was convicted of terror offences a decade earlier, is presumably back home where their eminent grandfather Sheikh Yakub Munshi ran the Sharia court and was President of the Islamic Research Institute of Gt Britain. I can’t help thinking Ms Schubart might have been better advised to explore why the well-funded Prevent programme rarely gets a public mention except when exposing its latest failures to protect our innocent citizens.
What’s more, her finding somewhat pales when measured against a breaking poll of British Muslim voters showing 60 per cent of them would back a pro-Palestine Independent in order to oust a Labour candidate. The Policy Exchange survey throws up quite a few eyebrow-raising attitudes that should, but probably won’t, be grave causes for concern. Unless of course you’re a pro-Hamas, violence-supporting, anti-Semitic opponent of free speech.
A clear signal from those 2024 elections was the sharpest of red flags for anyone interested in the street-level Muslim mood swing. Schubart identifies four specific areas where the numbers stood out, viz Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol and Kirklees, the latter being my home patch, specifically the intensely Muslim districts around north Kirklees – Dewsbury, Batley and Heckmondwike – where a Labour Party that would sweep the General Election two months later was dumped on its backside by the new generation of ‘Independents’ in May’s local poll.
Independent from whom, I could only wonder, as the newly formed Dewsbury and Batley Parliamentary seat witnessed the enthronement of political newcomer Iqbal Mohamed, an Independent whose focus on Palestine and building a new international airport in Mirpur clearly enchanted 41 per cent of the locals who bothered to turn out.
Understanding how the Muslim vote works on the ground might have informed Ms Schubart’s readers better, I felt, than stating the bleedin’ obvious. It is all about the demographic, yes, but not on a strictly or simply Muslim basis. And it works differently in a local poll to a national one. In bidding for council seats, it’s very tribal and competitive and for more than 30 years has been a traditional tri-party combat. That’s changing rapidly. But for a General Election? That’s when the diktat from on high holds sway and those erstwhile rivals gather under the one flag.
The Dewsbury West ward, home to the poorer Pakistani-heritage locals, for 30 years hopped back and forth between Lib Dems and Labour. Dewsbury South, the redoubt of the wealthier, more influential Gujarati Muslim community, was entirely Conservative for years until a presumed decree from above delivered vote swings of up to 100 per cent and Labour took over.
As of today? Three of the four Muslim councillors – elected on a Labour ticket, one the recent Mayor – now sit as Independents. The two remaining Labour members will be fearing today’s outcome, unlike over in Batley where the five Muslim Independents will likely prevail, a long-serving white Labour councillor counting down her final hours as an elected member.
These are the cataclysmic changes that signal the rising of Islam as a political force in its own right. For now the Greens may be weaponised as the useful idiots their temporary Muslim benefactors see them as, but only until the numbers game sways, as it inexorably will. It’s a numbers game that experts might be better casting forward, than poring over an already much-changed recent past.
