Labour is losing support from Muslim voters – could it cause problems at the 2024 general election?

A newly published poll is said to show that Labour’s support among Muslims has halved since 2019.

The party has not done itself any favours in the weeks since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October terror attacks.

But the claim that Labour is now backed by only 43 per cent of Muslims, compared to 86 per cent in 2019, was quickly branded misleading. Survation, which carried out the survey for the Labour Muslim Network, clarified that backing for the party has actually fallen to 60 per cent.

Nevertheless, the decline is still stark and is largely linked to Keir Starmer’s handling of the crisis in the Middle East.

The biggest concern in Labour circles is independent candidates running on pro-Palestine tickets and splitting the vote in key Labour seats.

MPs are increasingly nervous about the prospect of single-issue campaigns depriving them of their majorities, particularly in areas with large Muslim populations.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, often tipped as a future Labour leader, is believed to be concerned about British-Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad standing against him in Ilford North.

And the contest to replace Rochdale’s late Labour MP Tony Lloyd is being seen as a litmus test for how willing pro-Palestine voters are to rebel against Starmer’s leadership, with long-time campaigner George Galloway standing in the seat for the Workers Party of Britain.

Members have also raised concerns about how the party allocates campaign funding ahead of the general election; the breakdown is dependent on each MP’s majority, which could leave those in strongly Muslim areas at risk.

The main reason Labour is losing the support of Muslim voters, and many voters opposed to Israel’s strikes in Gaza, is Starmer’s refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire.

The Labour leader made an early blunder, telling LBC on 11 October that Israel has “the right” to withhold energy and water from Gaza.

He has since faced the resignation of more than 50 Labour councillors from the party, while 10 frontbench MPs who expressed their intention to vote for a ceasefire ended up quitting or being sacked.

Starmer has since denied that he backed Israel withholding humanitarian aid from Gaza, saying that he only backed Israel’s “right to self-defence”.

It is not just the party’s stance on Gaza that could cost it support among Muslim voters. Left-wing Muslim MP Apsana Begum has hit out at the “unresolved issues regarding the treatment of Black and Asian people within the Labour Party”.

And, responding to Monday’s poll, Mish Rahman, a member of the party’s National Executive Committee, said the findings are “deeply worrying but not surprising”.

“For months I have been alarmed by the Labour leadership’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Islamophobia within the party… whether it is the sheer disregard for Palestinian lives or the mistreatment of Muslim MPs like Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana,” he said.

With the general election later this year, the big questions are whether the upset will translate into enough lost votes to hurt the party and whether Starmer can turn it around.

Pollster Luke Tryl, UK director at the More In Common group, said he is “not convinced” there are enough people with strong enough feelings on the issue to change the way they vote.

He pointed out that even during the conflict, British Muslim voters’ top concerns are still the economy, the cost of living and the NHS. “So it would be surprising if a significant number of British Muslim voters defected from the Labour Party, given those domestic concerns,” he added.

Asked if Starmer can win back lost Muslim voters, one senior Labour MP colourfully told The Independent the political waters have been muddied.

“We s*** in the pool and now it is completely adulterated and people are convinced we don’t care about them,” the MP explained. “Anything we say isn’t being heard, and we can never go far enough now”.