U.K. Local Elections Yield Ominous Islamist Success
In places as far apart as Oxford and Manchester, independents won seats on an anti-Israel platform.
It’s a reliable rule—and an occasional source of tepid comfort—that however bad things seem in America, there is always something much worse going on somewhere else.
This applies not only to places where real genocides are happening, as opposed to the ones American police officers are accused of committing, or where deprivations of liberty are more serious than being denied food delivery when you’ve illegally occupied a university building. It obtains also in countries that some of us like to believe have achieved a high level of democratic civilization.
So as you watch while students, faculty and staff repurpose centers of American learning into Hamas propaganda factories, spare a thought for what just happened in the home of our most reliable ally, Britain.
You might have seen some of the recent manifestations of the reach of Islamist extremism on the streets of London—an antisemitic slogan projected onto Parliament, Jew-hatred paraded in protests across the capital, a police officer warning a man in the vicinity of an anti-Israel protest that by being “openly Jewish,” he posed a threat to public safety.
But when voters across England voted last Thursday in the last round of local elections before a national poll that must be held by January at the latest, the political force of such sentiment was on display.
You can’t take local elections in Britain too seriously. Most Brits don’t. England is a unitary political entity, unlike the U.S., with most major policies decided at the national level. The functions devolved to town and even city councils and mayors are as drearily mundane as their names are colorful. In places like Lower Slaughter and Grimsby, the biggest matters for locally elected officials are trash collection, the local parks and broken sidewalks.
But they play some role in important things like law enforcement. And local politics are highly partisan, the elections seen as tests for national political trends.
Last week’s results showed the opposition Labour Party is likely to take national office from the clown-car government led by revolving Conservative prime ministers for the past four years.
But its victory was tempered across much of the country by the largest ever vote for “independent” Muslim candidates, furious with Labour for its supposedly insufficient condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Until four years ago Labour was led by a man who had openly courted Hamas and smiled at the rise of antisemitism in its ranks. Under its new leader, Keir Starmer, the party has tried to clean up its act—among other things by striking an even-handed approach to the war in Gaza, condemning the Oct. 7 attacks and calling gingerly for a cease-fire. This has outraged many of its radical supporters, who struck back last Thursday.
In the northwest town of Oldham, gains by pro-Gaza candidates cost Labour control of the local government. In nearby Blackburn, Labour lost council seats to independent candidates. Across the Pennines in Bradford, candidates on the same platform won four seats, placing the independent caucus on the same level as the Tories as the largest opposition group. In Birmingham, a pro-Gaza independent received 20% of the vote for mayor.
Many of the radicals ran as Green Party candidates, though their campaigns focused less on low-emission zones than the Gaza war zone. In areas where Muslims made up more than 20% of the population, Labour lost almost 18 points from the previous elections three years ago.
In places as far apart as Oxford and Manchester, independents who ran on an anti-Israel platform won seats, setting up some potentially troublesome issues of local administration. It’s one thing to have your trash collection organized by a Hamas supporter, quite another to have him making decisions about your local police.
Perhaps most colorful in every sense was Mothin Ali, a successful Green candidate in Leeds who concluded a fiery victory speech about Gaza with that famous rallying cry of the defenders of the environment: “Allahu Akbar!”
One could overstate the problem. Turnout was low, and except in a few districts radicals won only a small vote share. But the larger significance of this electoral breakthrough shouldn’t be underestimated.
Barring a Tory resurrection of Lazarus proportions, Labour will form the national government in less than a year, with a comfortable majority, and it will be under intense pressure from this rapidly rising breed of “anti-Zionists”—not all of them Muslim, at home and abroad.
Earlier this year Mr. Starmer had to pull the party’s support at the last minute from a candidate in a parliamentary by-election who had been caught on film spouting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The seat was won by an independent openly supportive of radical Islam.
The Labour leader is now beset with calls to end his already highly qualified support of Israel. During the weekend, John McTernan, a Labour adviser who once worked for Prime Minister Tony Blair, tweeted: “We are being sent a message about Gaza and must listen, understand and act.”
At least in America they’ve only taken over the universities.