Politics: the shape of things to come

By Richard North - May 27, 2024

The chief leader writer at the Observer, Sonia Sodha, describes herself as a “half-Hindu, half-Sikh Indian”. Before her current day job she spent time as a senior advisor to Ed Miliband when he was leader of the opposition.

With the same sense of entitlement that one sees in Tories when confronted with a loss of votes to the upstart Reform, our Sonia is now railing about the “anti-Starmer left”, which has the temerity to split the vote by not voting for Labour. She thus brands it “foolish and self-indulgent”.

As we move closer to a general election, she accepts that there is discontent from the “anti-Labour left” who claim there is little to distinguish Starmer from Sunak but, in her patronising Guardianista way, she will only allow that it is “getting noisier”.

Furthermore, in focusing on this “noise”, she selects only a tiny bit of the “anti-Labour left” cosmos, an umbrella campaign which calls itself “We Deserve Better”, which shot briefly to fame a couple of months ago when manchild Owen Jones joined it after leaving Labour.

Making his “political red line” the refusal to support what he claims, “would amount to war crimes against innocent civilians, toddlers and newborn babies among them” in Gaza, and then – as he claims Starmer has done – “gaslighting the public over doing so”, he joins a group aiming to unseat key Labour figures at the general election.

Included in the group’s list is shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, and the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting. The collective is also channelling donations to Green and independent candidates, including none other than the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Jones and his fellow travellers feel empowered to take what they regard as their principled stance because they believe the Tories’ chance of winning at the election is infinitesimally small. What matters now, he says, is “whether anyone who wants to redistribute wealth and power is denied a voice in Starmer’s administration”.

Jones is clearly aiming to provide an independent caucus of voices on the left, to pressure Labour into adopting transformative policies. Otherwise, he says, when inevitable disillusionment with a government rooted in deceit and lacking any solutions to Britain’s woes seeps in, it will be the “radical right” that stands to benefit.

What worries Sonia Sodha, though, is the otherwise “very positive set of results for Labour in the local and mayoral elections earlier this month”. She notes that
the party experienced losses in some of its safer seats as a result of disaffection, including over its position on Gaza.

And while she accepts that there are few existing Labour seats at risk, she is concerned that this underplays the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win.

Sodha cites James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, who has written about what he calls the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority.

He forecasts that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. Looking at the Labour/Liberal Democrat vote share, he suggests that there is an increasing pattern of the two parties’ voters aligning themselves with the strongest anti-Conservative challenger in elections – as opposed to them doggedly sticking to traditional voting patterns,

This pattern, Kanagasooriam says, has emerged in by-elections over the course of this parliament, and would reduce Labour’s majority threshold even further if replicated at a general election.

Then, he factors in the Greens and warns that if more than predicted numbers of those who voted for them in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Certainly, we are seeing the Lib-Dems make a strong tactical push for “blue wall” seats in the South, which could have an effect of marginally reducing Labour’s gains – although, traditionally, disaffected Tory voters are more likely to move to the Lib-Dems than Labour.

And, according to recent YouGov research, the thought of the Tories staying in power is even less appealing to voters than the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn entering Downing Street was five years ago – giving the Lib-Dems a unique opportunity.

But, as we know, there is more than just the line-up of established parties which threatens to erode the Labour vote.

Back in March, following Galloway’s success at Rochdale, LabourList was well aware that Labour had a problem with the Muslims over Gaza, and referred to the Muslim Vote listing of over 50 target constituencies.

Relying on a New Statesman analysis, LabourList remarks that a combination of white working-class voters and Muslim (also working-class) voters in the local community delivered Galloway’s victory.

There are other constituencies, it thinks, in which Labour could very well suffer similar, and embarrassing losses in the upcoming election, many of them held by current shadow cabinet members.

It is there, perhaps, that the greatest threat to Starmer lies. Sonia Sodha acknowledges that there has as of yet been less scrutiny of the independent and Green candidates trying to appeal to Labour-sceptical voters than there has of Reform on the other side of the spectrum, but she herself barely looks at the Muslim vote as a coherent electoral force.

And yet Muslim commentators are readily discussing the strength of this vote, while this YouTube video deals candidly with the aims of the Muslim community, and its plans to organise the vote.

Sodha’s point about Reform having faced more scrutiny than the “anti-Labour left” is well taken, but her piece fails to compensate for this imbalance. While the Muslims are organising in plain sight, they are not getting the same degree of visibility, with only sporadic attention from other media.

Altogether, there is actually a lot to look. We have the effects of the Lib-Dems, who could also attract local Green support in some constituencies, the Greens fighting on their own in key constituencies, the disaffected white working class hoovered up by Galloway’s Workers Party along with disadvantaged Muslim voters, plus the “MusGreen” alliance where there is a tactical advantage, taking in the “progressive” left which might include student communities.

Then we have the hard-core “ghetto” Muslims who are powerful enough in some constituencies to elect their own ethnic candidates, more so if there is a broad religious alliance which takes in Somalis, Bangladeshis and other Muslim groups.

The interplay of these groupings is shaping politics in the here and now, almost invisible to the media and mainstream pundits who continue to indulge themselves with a largely fictional two-party contest, based on a political paradigm which no longer exists.

If we factor in the “stay-at-home” party, where many voters are making a conscious decision to withdraw from the political process, then the real-world politics bears no relation to the “look squirrel!” posturing that is being featured in the media.

The concept of a multi-level election campaign which I floated yesterday has never seemed more real, where the politicians are truly in a world of their own with diminishing contact with reality, prattling about topics of their own choosing which do not reflect the concerns of their voters.

What comes over also from the Muslim YouTube video is that this is no temporary blip, but the shape of politics to come, especially as demography favours the Muslim ghetto-dwellers, who are increasingly flexing their political muscles.

One further change that might yet emerge is the reaction to sectarian voting, where white communities also start to vote on ethnic rather than party lines, giving an altogether different and sinister tone to British politics.

If this really is the shape of things to come, then we will see concrete signs of it when the results come in from the voting on 4 July. Whether the politicians will even begin to understand what is happening remains to be seen. Like the media, they may be the last to know.