Among the high-profile defeats of the night was Jonathan Ashworth, who was being lined up for a Cabinet job by Starmer. Incoming Health Secretary Wes Streeting, facing a pro-Gaza challenge, clung on by fewer than 1,000 votes.
“There’s no doubt that there was a reaction,” said the Labour MP. “There are many people who did not like our position and it wasn’t just Muslims. I myself had that experience from non-Muslims telling me to get off their property.”
Richard Johnson, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said Labour is “aware that it has been perceived in opposition, at least, to be neglectful of the concerns of Muslim voters.”
“They have a desire to try and win back those seats and the countervailing influence of a pro-Israel position in the Labour Party is not nearly as strong as it once was,” he argued.
Four of the five seats — Blackburn, Dewsbury and Batley, Birmingham Perry Barr and Leicester South — that now have pro-Gaza independent candidates are in the top 20 U.K. constituencies with the highest proportion of Muslims, according to the 2021 census.
ICC is ‘extreme’
For their part, the opposition Conservatives have been quick to frame Labour’s policy changes as a cowardly response to election losses. Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, accused Labour of “abandoning Israel.”
