Sabia Akram has spent most of her life campaigning for Britain’s opposition Labour Party, but she will not celebrate if the party wins the July 4 election because she quit the party over leader Keir Starmer’s handling of the war in Gaza and issues related to race.
Labour holds a commanding lead in opinion polls as Starmer has returned the party to centre stage after its crushing 2019 election defeat under his predecessor, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn.
But he has lost the support of some black and Asian voters who traditionally vote Labour, as they have backed Israel and the party’s stance has gradually moved towards supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Labour Party’s treatment of Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP, and its blocking of a Muslim candidate have also alienated some voters, according to interviews with voters, pollsters, political activists and academics.
Starmer attempted to bring the party back to a centrist stance, and promote candidates for election who would vote as a disciplined bloc if they won, and this change alienated some ethnic minorities who supported Corbyn and his left-wing vision.
Sophia Collignon, an associate professor at Queen Mary University, said party reform was underway nationally but that it had caused tensions among members and voters, and the challenge for Starmer was to hold all the different strands together.
Critics such as Akram say he has “sold the soul” of the Labour Party in order to get the keys to Number 10, the British prime minister’s residence.
“It is no longer defined by its values and core principles,” he said, adding that the party has become a home for people who want to join it. He cited a right-wing MP who broke away from the ruling Conservative Party.
A long-running Ipsos survey of the voting intentions of ethnic minorities found that in the second half of 2023, Starmer’s net satisfaction rating was the lowest of any Labour opposition leader since the series began in 1996.
Kieran Pedley of Ipsos said that with a 20-point lead in opinion polls, concerns among ethnic minorities would have little impact on the election result, but added: “If these trends persist – and we don’t know whether they will be – then it’s possible this will become more politically important.”
Akram, 43, resigned as a Labour councillor in Slough, west of London, along with six others in early June because of what she saw as censorship around Gaza that meant she could not criticise Israel. She also cited the treatment of Faiza Shaheen, who was barred from standing as a Labour candidate in a seat in northeast London.
Shaheen said she was told it was about historical tweets she had liked that criticised Israeli supporters. She apologised, but told the BBC she also thought it was because she is left-wing. She is standing as an independent candidate.
The Labor Party did not respond to a Reuters request for comment about the allegations.
Last month, Starmer, speaking after his party won a parliamentary seat in northern England and gained control of several councils across England, acknowledged that Gaza had impacted Labour support in some areas.
balancing act
Akram also criticised Corbyn’s treatment of his close ally Abbott, who was suspended from the Labour Party for more than a year after she said Jewish, Irish and Traveller people did not face racism throughout their lives.
Media reports initially said she would be barred from running in the election, causing anger among some voters, but the party later said she could stand again as a party candidate.
Ngozi Fulani, founder and CEO of domestic abuse charity Sista Space, based in Abbott’s Hackney neighbourhood, said many black people wanted her to run as an independent candidate.
“Most black people have always voted Labour, that’s my experience,” he told Reuters. “(But) the Labour Party has declined … we don’t feel a connection,” he said, adding that Starmer’s Labour Party “doesn’t seem very interested in the issues that particularly affect us”.
Hackney, an area of north-east London where 21% of the population is black, is one of the capital’s most deprived areas, with more than one in three households living below the poverty line even after taking housing costs into account.
Of the 18 people interviewed by Reuters who have supported Abbott for nearly four decades, 14 said they believed they had been treated badly and would vote for him in the next election after his reappointment.
Starmer, the country’s former chief prosecutor, became Labour Party leader in April 2020 after he vowed reforms after the equality watchdog said the party discriminated against Jews.
An independent inquiry in 2022 also found structural racism, sexism and factionalism and a “hierarchy of racism” in the party, where tackling antisemitism was a priority.
The Labour Party has long been the political home of many ethnic minority voters and, according to think tank British Future, one in five of its election candidates are from an ethnic minority background. The last census in 2021 said 18% of the population in England and Wales were from ethnic minorities.
However, other parties — including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party — have greater representation than Labour in the government and party structure, which may make voters more likely to gravitate toward them in the future.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)