Labour might have won the UK election, but the loss of key figures to pro-Gaza candidates highlight the need for a party rethink.
Perspectives
Paul McLoughlin
10 Jul, 2024
NEW ARAB
Starmer won the election but will have to consider youth anger on key issues [Getty/TNA]
Economist Friedrich Hayek’s prophecies about politics have a mixed record but two of his ideas apply well to last week's UK general election.
One is that democracy tends to throw up so many surprises it’s impossible to predict the future, and another, radical even for Hayek, is that only middle-aged people should be given the vote as the youth don’t know what’s best for their futures and the old won’t live long enough to see their choices play out.
This election saw results that combined both of these elements with the most moderate Labour Party in years winning a huge 172-seat majority, thanks largely to voters aged between 25 and 49, with some surprises from the British political fringes thrown into the mix.
Nigel Farage's right-wing populist party, Reform UK, won 12 percent of the vote (but only five out of 650 seats), the third highest of any party with almost one in five people aged between 50 and 69 backing the party.
On the other end of the age bracket mentioned by Hayek are the youth who appeared instrumental in sending to parliament five pro-Gaza Independent and five Green MPs with almost one in four voters aged 18-24 backing the eco-socialist party or ‘other’, according to YouGov, likely an independent or left-leaning candidate.
Constraints on choice
Ultimately, the UK electoral map and voting habits reflect the peculiarities of the first-past-the-post system with people theoretically voting for a candidate to represent their constituency on a national level rather than voting for a party to govern the country.
Although more than nine-in-ten MPs today belong to one of the three main political parties, there was a strong trend of tactical voting during this election with Labour supporters in Conservative safe seats backing the Liberal Democrats, and vice-versa, to end 14 years of Tory government.
The still substantial blue areas on the political map can be explained by Conservative constituencies taking up vast rural, ageing, and often prosperous constituencies, while Labour strongholds tend to be dabs of red in more densely populated urban communes.
This is why, unlike other countries with more centralised systems - such as the United States and France - local issues tend to matter as much as national ones during general elections. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss might have run the economy to the ground during her 45 days in office in 2022, but a major factor in her unseating on Friday was her apparent support for the development of a huge, and likely smelly, livestock farm in her constituency.
Corbyn returns to parliament
Jeremy Corbyn, who was barred from representing Labour in the election due to his handling of antisemitism allegations during his leadership, understood this well when he chose to run as an independent in Islington North with little financial or political backing against Labour rival Praful Nargund, a party that has held the seat - bar one election - since 1937.
Corbyn built a huge grassroots team which began with a trickle of activists and mushroomed into an army of canvassers by the eve of the election who stood outside train stations or knocked on doors across the strip of North London making their case for the left-wing independent.
Corbyn, of course, has been a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause since he was elected MP for Islington North in 1983, but under his leadership of Labour, the party was dogged by his perceived soft touch toward dictators, such as Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, as well as the accusations of antisemitism within the rank-and-file.
In the build-up to the election, seemingly non-official posters were plastered across walls in Islington with the slogan ‘We support Jeremy Corbyn because he supports us’, while cars zipped down high streets to zealous cries from loudspeakers urging people to vote for Corbyn, bringing to mind stories of revolutionary Paris, May 1968, although perhaps on a much more timid scale.
One of his canvassers told me, just hours before the election, that as a Jewish man he was hugely concerned about the rise of antisemitism in Europe but was convinced that Jeremy was a friend of the Jewish people, and his criticisms of Israel were fair and valid.
Islington North has a sizeable Muslim population but nowhere near as large as other constituencies where Independents running on pro-Palestine platforms won seats, so Corbyn’s campaign literature focused as much on supporting renters and stopping the privatisation of the NHS, as it did on Gaza.
By election day, official ‘Vote Corbyn’ posters, which predominated the windows of more working-class areas earlier now appeared vividly in leafy, middle-class Tufnell Park, coinciding with a shock win for the former Labour leader, who captured almost half of the votes and produced a blob of ‘Independent grey’ on an otherwise red North London map.
Progressive future
Voters of Corbyn were inspired by a multitude of factors. Gaza was undoubtedly one of them, but Corbyn also understood that thousands in Islington North were struggling to pay bills or live in insecure rental environments, so it was essential to be more than a one-issue pony.
This is where we go back to Hayek. Although I won’t pretend The New Arab office is populated by soothsayers who can foresee the future of British politics, the team did highlight, before many bigger media outlets did, the importance of the ‘Gaza vote’ in the election, an issue taken up with gusto by the mainstream press, this week.
Hayek is correct, it is impossible to predict the future in politics, but The New Arab’s diverse team - made up of people of different ages, backgrounds and from across the UK and beyond - managed to see more of the issues that mattered to voters, young and old, and so were perhaps uniquely positioned to tell these stories.
The New Arab looked at how Muslims in rural England, disturbed by the Conservative and Labour parties' approach toward Gaza, intended to back the Greens or Lib Dems resulting in big wins for both parties in the South West, while our journalists flagged the concerns among refugees about the rise of Reform UK and their polarising anti-immigration rhetoric.
We profiled the pro-Gaza independent candidates who defied the odds and unseated, or came close to, Labour candidates following the party’s disastrous handling of the Gaza war.
The New Arab also warned that many of the Labour Party's natural constituency - the young, people of colour, and the working class - were losing faith in the party over Gaza and other issues, as they had during the war on Iraq back in 2003.
We also highlighted a survey, missed by much of the mainstream press, that revealed how half of British Arabs intended to spurn both Labour and the Conservatives at the ballot box and opt for something new.
Perhaps most importantly, The New Arab investigated the key role the youth vote would play in the election and how Gaza influenced their intentions to back independents, left-wing candidates, or the Greens.
While Hayek had a pessimistic view about the voting habits of the youth, twenty-somethings in the UK put their trust in candidates that offered the possibility of a more just foreign policy, fairer society, green growth, and brighter future that could be a sign of things to come in British politics.
The winners -- and losers -- of the 2024 general election should learn the right lessons from these results, whether in government or opposition.
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