This election has exposed the cancer of sectarianism

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While Keir Starmer is celebrating getting the keys to 10 Downing Street, not all is rosy for the UK Labour Party. It may have bagged a historic landslide victory, but there are reasons for it to be concerned. The growing sectarianism in some of its own traditional seats, for instance.

By the end of election night, Labour had lost a string of seats to independent, ‘pro-Palestine’ candidates. These losses were, unsurprisingly, concentrated in urban areas in the Midlands and the north with large Muslim populations. In Blackburn, Labour’s Kate Hollern lost to independent Adnan Hussain, who built his campaign primarily around the Gaza conflict. Similarly, in Dewsbury and Batley, Labour candidate Heather Iqbal lost to pro-Palestine independent Iqbal Mohamed by nearly 7,000 votes. In Birmingham Perry Barr, Labour incumbent Khalid Mahmood was beaten by Ayoub Khan, an independent who has previously questioned whether Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October took place. Khan was backed by The Muslim Vote, an identitarian campaign group that wants to put ‘Muslim issues at the forefront’ of British politics.

Perhaps the most high-profile Labour loss of the election was Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South. Incumbent and party heavyweight Ashworth was defeated by Shockat Adam, an independent who celebrated his win last night with a cry of ‘This is for the people of Gaza!’.

Muslims were by no means the only group being urged to vote as a religious bloc. Earlier in the campaign, a group of British Hindu organisations published a so-called Hindu Manifesto, listing their various demands. This was then signed by a group of Conservative parliamentary candidates in the run-up to the election. This seems to have paid off for the Tories in at least one constituency. The only seat to turn blue in what was a truly disastrous election was Leicester East. Tory Shivani Raja made much of her Hindu identity during the campaign and won the majority-Indian constituency with a lead of 4,426 votes.

It is particularly noteworthy that these sectarian divisions made themselves known in Leicester. The city was once branded a paragon of British social cohesion and a model for multiculturalism. It supposedly embodied the virtues of diversity in modern Britain, being a ‘vibrant’ city with a majority non-white population. This reputation was an odd one to begin with, given the historic levels of labour exploitation in Leicester’s segregated communities. But it was certainly left in tatters after the unrest we saw there in August and September of 2022. Violence broke out primarily between Hindu and Muslim youths, with subcontinental-style political tensions spilling into the streets of an English city.

Lessons have clearly not been learned in Leicester. It is now a politically, ethnically and religiously divided city, treated as a Hindu-Muslim battleground by the people claiming to represent it. Embedding identity politics into our national and local politics will not end well for anyone. It sidelines important domestic issues, such as the cost of living, healthcare and employment, in favour of posturing over affairs in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

It also marginalises white working-class communities. To what extent will their domestic, bread-and-butter concerns – especially on issues such as immigration, integration and identity – be taken seriously by their elected representatives in cities like Leicester? If these voters do not feel sufficiently represented by the democratic system – one where a party such as Reform UK wins only four seats despite earning over four million votes – who do they turn to?

In the aftermath of this election, much of the focus will be on Labour’s majority and the Conservatives’ catastrophic defeat. But the key takeaway should be that there is something seriously wrong with the state of our democracy. Growing sectarianism is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.