Politics: target fixation

By Richard North - June 19, 2024

There is a phenomenon in air warfare known as “target fixation”. It occurs when the pilot of a ground attack aircraft is so focused on firing his guns at a target that he loses situational awareness and fails to pull up in time, often with fatal consequences.

In pursuing the saga of the Muslim Vote (TMV) in this election campaign, I have been conscious of the possibility that I too might be affected by a form of target fixation, so focused on a phenomenon that is being neglected by the national media that I am losing sight of the bigger picture.

With that in mind, I take some comfort from a media report headed: “Gaza tests historic bond between UK Muslims and Labour”, dated 16 June.

The sub-heading to the report tells us the: “Gaza is a long way from the picturesque foothills of the Yorkshire Dales but the issue could swing UK general election races in northern England, with many local Muslims angry at Labour’s stance”, leading in to a narrative which describes the situation in the Keighley and Ilkley constituency”.

What makes this report particularly interesting is that is have been produced not by the British media but by the French state broadcaster, France24, which sent a camera crew to Keighley, a former mill town to the northwest of Bradford, in order to interview the independent Muslim candidate, Vasim Shabir, who is contesting the seat largely on a Gaza ticket.

The constituency itself is an unhappy amalgam of the town of Keighley – part of Bradford District and robustly working class with a sizeable Muslim population – with the entirely separate, picturesque town of Ilkley, far more prosperous and a middle-class Tory stronghold.

With the populations of the two towns evenly matched, the seat has become a Labour-Tory marginal and has changed hands regularly as clockwork since the late 1940s. Held by Conservative Robbie Moore up to the dissolution of parliament, with a slender majority of 2,218 in 2019, the Labour challenger and previous MP, John Grogan, is widely expected to enter the seat this time round.

However, with over 10,000 Muslim voters in the constituency, mostly resident in the Keighley area, Vaz Shabir, endorsed by TMV, is confident that he will shave off a substantial part of the Labour vote. With Grogan polling 23,080 votes in 2019, the Muslim block vote is not enough for Shabir to capture the seat, but it is enough to stop Grogan winning it, allowing Robbie Moore to sail up the middle to keep the seat this time round.

Moore will be challenged by Reform candidate, Andrew Judson, but Ukip/Brexit party have never performed particularly well in the constituency, so it is unlikely that the Reform party will pose a significant threat in this contest.

Potentially, therefore, Keighley joins the Chingford and Woodford constituency, where the independent Muslim candidate will split the Labour vote allowing the incumbent Tory – in the latter case Iain Duncan Smith – to keep the seat.

In its article, France24 explores this dynamic, citing Solicitor Shaid Iqbal, a leading figure in Keighley’s Muslim community. He says that people are “very, very angry”, and while he concedes that they are angry at both parties, they are mostly directing their ire at Labour “because they thought that Labour was a party which would stick up for human rights, speak up against atrocities”,

The French broadcaster goes on to say that Labour strategists admit the issue lost them votes during May’s local elections, but believe that, such is the disillusionment at the ruling Conservatives, the party will still win the seat.

No amount of national polling though, or the famed MRP analyses, is sensitive enough to predict the outcome. And, even if Labour does win the seat, Shabir thinks the relief may be temporary.

Pointing to the demographic divides within the Muslim community, he says that “The older generation, who don’t have access to TikTok and social media, are still pretty much loyal to Labour”, but warns that the younger generation, British-born Pakistanis and Bengalis “overwhelmingly do not want to vote for Labour”.
“I think they are going to lose the vote for a generation to come”, Shabir says, adding there were “a lot of discussions going on” between independent candi-dates about forming a new party.
One might have thought that there was enough material here for a follow-on media article, and indeed an online search yields a longer report.

This one is headed “‘It’s definitely an issue’: Gaza war strains support for Labour among Muslims in England”, with the sub-heading “Rift with voters could influence result on July 4 in marginal seats with sizeable Muslim populations”.

But just in case you might be thinking that the UK national media had woken up to the hidden story of this election, I should point out that this is published by the UK edition of the Abu Dhabi online magazine The National.

Building on my report about Slough and the lack of UK national media coverage there – as well as the absence of any reports of the Blackburn incident, I think there is enough evidence gathered to state with confidence that the Muslim vote is a significant factor in this election, and not an issue that is simply a narrow obsession.

Nevertheless, amid the continuing Farage mania, the polling companies continue to churn out their surveys, with the latest MRP analysis coming from Ipsos UK.

This analysis has Labour on 453 seats, the Conservatives on 115 and the Lib-Dems on 38. Reform gets three seats and the Greens are also given three, while the SNP struggles in on 15 seats, no doubt to the great advantage of Labour. The “others” category is not mentioned.

Labour has an implied vote share of 43 percent, with the Tories on 25 percent, Reform UK is on 12 percent, the Lib-Dems on 10 percent and the Greens on 6 percent. This is yet another poll which does not support the YouGov poll which puts Reform above the Tories.

As to the detail, it seems that the Guardian has published the most comprehensive report on this analysis, where it also points out that more than 100 Conservative-held seats appear to be on a knife-edge with the results in the hands of millions of undecided or swing voters.

The model, we are told, finds 117 seats, the majority of which were won by the Tories in 2019, are now considered “too close to call” as they have a winning margin of less than five percentage points. They include 56 where the Tories are marginally ahead and 48 where Labour is slightly in the lead.

The Ipsos website give more detail and, as with earlier polls, we see caveats that do not find their way into the popular press.

The final seat outcome at this stage of the campaign, we are told, is not guaranteed. The figures are an estimate of people’s current voting intentions, not a prediction of what will happen at the election itself.

At the time of fieldwork, we are further informed, the deadline for candidate submissions had only just passed, meaning the campaign was still likely to intensify in some areas. Additionally, as with all MRP models, the attempts to model constituency-level outcomes from a national survey mean there are a number of uncertainties to take into account.

We are advised to exercise caution when looking at individual seats. While MRP is good at taking into account the different demographic profiles of each constituency, with relatively few respondents per constituency, we are warned that it is unlikely to be able to capture the full local context, especially where there are unique political dynamics. Taking into account unique local dynamics is also difficult.

To illustrate the point, the Ipsos MRP sets Keighley as a “strong Labour” winner, with 55 percent of the vote against 28 percent for the Tories (with no allocation for the independent), while Chingford is a “toss-up” with Labour three points ahead of the Tories. The three named Bradford seats, which could all go to the Muslim independents, are marked “strong Labour”.

Given the uncertainties, especially the interplay between Reform and Muslim voters – the one set attacking the Tories, the other Labour – and with the inherent errors and limitations of the MRP process, it is probable that these results are too fragile to be used as a reliable guide of the outcome of this election, which indeed Ipsos readily acknowledges.

A little less regard for the headlines might be in order.