Politics: a party of Islam

RICHARD NORTH

In an episode which almost makes Reform UK look professional, Zarah Sultana MP has announced that she is resigning from the Labour Party and, with Jeremy Corbyn, will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.

The only nigger in the woodpile though is that Master Corbyn does not appear to have been told of this, and is said be “furious and bewildered” at the way the party has been launched without consultation.

So furious and bewildered is our Master Corbyn that, up to press his most recent social media post (yesterday afternoon) talks merely of the inevitability of a full independent investigation into “British complicity in Israeli war crimes”. Of la Sultana’s ambitions, there is nothing.

Ostensibly, that makes this a non-story, although that in the past has proved no deterrent to the British legacy media (or the media in general, for that matter). Stepping up to the plate just before midnight yesterday with a rollicking report is the Guardian’s African heritage Aletha Adu.

This report has the headline “MP Zarah Sultana says she will ‘co-lead’ new party as she quits Labour for Corbyn group” but has a sub-head which hints at the inner turmoil as it reveals: “Coventry South MP, who lost whip last year, surprises some in Corbyn’s Independent Alliance with news of formal plans”.

However, the very same Aletha Adu was very much in the fray earlier in the afternoon with a piece headed “Jeremy Corbyn hints at launch of new party as leftwing alternative to Labour”, bearing the sub-head: “Former Labour leader confirms talks under way among Independent Alliance group of MPs”.

Corbyn had apparently been speaking on ITV’s Peston programme, when he hinted he could launch a political party alongside other left-wing independent MPs in an attempt to offer “an alternative” to Labour, before the next general election.

Confirming that discussions were under way among the Independent Alliance group of MPs that he had co-founded last year, he had been asked directly whether they were preparing to form a new party. Corbyn did not rule it out. “That grouping [of independents] will come together, there will be an alternative”, he said.

Only a few hours later, though, la Adu is conceding that Corbyn “has long hinted at plans to establish a more organised vehicle for leftwing and pro-Palestinian campaigning”, but he has so far avoided confirming any formal structure or leadership arrangements.

Certainly, the former Labour leader “has not committed to the project becoming a party or endorsed any specific leadership roles”. Then we are told that “the Guardian understands he was frustrated by Sultana’s unilateral announcement, which some regard as premature and potentially counterproductive”.

Premature or not, though, this has very much been in the wind since the general election last year when five candidates endorsed by The Muslim Vote – including Corbyn – won seats in the new parliament, set to lay the foundations for the Muslim community’s “political future”.

Oddly enough, in the Guardian coverage, as well as the reports in the Telegraph and The Times, there is no mention at all of the Muslim link, and nor is there in any other paper – such as the London Evening Standard – that I have looked at, to say nothing of the BBC.

Yet it is no secret that Sultana is a Muslim – born in Britain to a family of Mirpuri origin. In any new party, she will be joined by fellow Muslims Shockat Adam, MP for Leicester South; Ayoub Khan, Birmingham Perry Barr; Adnan Hussain Blackburn; and Iqbal Mohamed, MP for Dewsbury and Batley.

Corbyn has said, according to the Guardian, that new party would focus on poverty, inequality and a foreign policy “that’s based on peace rather than war”. In this, he’s either lying or being disingenuous. As the performance of these MPs in parliament has already shown, their primary concern is what they were elected for, “Muslim issues”, which they pledged to put at the “forefront”.

In skirting the Muslim dimension, the Telegraph calls Corbyn’s (not yet) new party a “hard-Left challenge to Starmer”, but this is entirely typical of the British media which, as I wrote almost a year ago has a history of ignoring Muslim voters.

But this is not a “hard left” split, even though Sultana herself dresses up her concerns in socialist clothes as she rails against benefit cuts. Having been suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party last year for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap, that tells its own story. That policy is overwhelmingly to the advantage of her Muslim constituents.

What we are in fact seeing is the continuation of that process which we saw at the general election, a different kind of politics where Muslim voters are shedding their left-wing disguise and beginning to emerge as a fully-fledged Muslim party with its own, identifiable sectarian agenda.

The loss of Sultana is no threat to Starmer – she was off the party voting roll anyway, and the creation of another minority party, whose members are already in opposition, is not going to trouble him in the short term.

In the longer-term, though, the effect could be significant. At the last election, I estimated that the outcomes of more than 80 seats could in some way be influenced by the Muslim vote, with independent Muslim candidates holding between 20 and 40 seats.

For complex reasons, that didn’t come to pass although, for all the hype attendant on Reform’s performance, The Muslim Vote actually matched the number of seats taken by Farage’s party. If Sultana’s wishes come true, this new bloc will have one more seat than Reform.

Come the next election – with a stronger organisation behind them and an identifiable party in the fray – the Muslim vote will be another wild card in an already fractured electoral system and could this time meet its potential of disrupting 80 seats – most of them Labour. With Reform snapping at Labour’s heels, this could turn the election.

To current events, Starmer’s immediate response might be to double down on his already evident support for Muslim communities, and his party might press forward with its Islamophobia agenda in a bid to head off further desertions to what will be an Islam party.

Overall, though, there is a possibility that the net effect could be beneficial. The emergence of a sectarian Islam party could constitute a wake-up call for Labour when they realise that their temporary alliance with the Muslims is over and that they are electoral rivals.

From steering its policies to attract the Muslim vote, the party might be forced to look to its roots for the support of the very people it has neglected, changing – if not transforming – its approach to the electorate.

Yet the downside is clear for all to see. When this Islam party does emerge – as eventually it must – it will demonstrate that the unassimilated Muslim ghetto dwellers in this country are growing in power and confidence, sufficient to shed their Labour skin and declare their true colours. But at least it will bring the fight out into the open.

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This article (Politics: a party of Islam) was created and published by Turbulent Times and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Richard North

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