It is 10 years since the French author Michel Houellebecq published his satirical novel, Submission, about an electoral alliance between the metropolitan left and Islamism. The bestseller caused a storm of criticism for its alleged racism and Islamophobia. But this morning it looks rather more like a prescient forecast of the destination of British electoral politics.
The all-important Gorton and Denton by-election was won this morning by the Green Party, not on climate change or the environment, but largely by appealing to the prejudices and preoccupations of the Muslim community in Manchester. It won its first-ever by-election victory by campaigning in minority languages, waving Palestinian and Pakistani flags, and condemning Zionism and “genocide in Gaza.”
In election leaflets, the Greens portrayed the Labour prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, as a friend of the Indian Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi. This importation of the sectarian politics of another country—Modi is anathema to the Pakistani Muslim community in Manchester—is not entirely new in British politics, but never on this scale.
The defeated Reform candidate, Matt Goodwin, said the victorious Hannah Spencer had united a coalition of “Islamists and woke progressives that came together to dominate a constituency.” Reform, which has been leading recent UK opinion polls, had hoped to win in Gorton and Denton and in the end came a poor second. But they do not seem too disappointed. Nigel Farage’s upstart populists pushed the Labour candidate into third place in what was supposedly the governing party’s sixth-safest parliamentary seat. The Conservatives returned only 706 votes and lost their deposit.
The Greens didn’t just win this by-election. They trounced the establishment parties, winning a majority of 4,000 and 41 percent of the vote in what was supposed to have been a close race. The Labour Party, which regards northern cities like Manchester as its home ground, is in a state of profound shock today. In the 2024 general election Labour won over 50 percent of the votes in Gorton and Denton.
Two things will now happen in the aftermath. The pressure on Starmer to step down will renew after a few weeks in which he had appeared to have been consolidating his position. The party he leads is also likely to move sharply to the left in an attempt to claw back the votes lost in unprecedented numbers in this heartland seat.
It will almost certainly tone down its recent rhetoric on immigration. The Labour government’s recent moves to control illegal migration are deeply resented here. It may also accelerate its much-criticized plans to make “Islamophobia,” defined as hostility to “Muslimness,” a criminal offense. The Labour government recently squashed moves to ban first-cousin marriages, which are prevalent in British Pakistani communities.
Of course, Gorton and Denton is only one midterm by-election, but it comes at a pivotal moment in British politics and culture. The polling guru Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde told BBC Radio this morning that the result “raises major, major questions about the future of our traditional Labour–Conservative duopoly.” It also raises major questions about the extent to which Britain is fragmenting into what are called “parallel communities” in which British democratic values no longer apply.
There was significant evidence of family voting in Gorton and Denton yesterday. This illegal practice involves members of minority ethnic families being lined up in polling booths and effectively being told how to vote, usually by the patriarch. Democracy Volunteers, the accredited observers of the by-election, said they had seen “the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK.”
The victorious candidate, Hannah Spencer, who calls herself a “plumber,” did not campaign entirely on the ethnic vote. She also capitalized on resentment at the cost-of-living crisis and the collapse in the jobs market for graduates. But there was no disguising the character of this campaign by the Greens. It is the fruit of the party’s change under its charismatic new leader, Zack Polanski, who blames society’s ills on “billionaires not paying their share,” wants to legalize hard drugs, and aspires to “a world without borders”.
But no mainstream party has so blatantly appealed to sectarian sentiment in British politics. This was another humiliation for the Labour–Tory duopoly, sometimes called the “uniparty,” which has dominated British politics for the last century. It will also be seen as confirmation that mass immigration has altered British culture and introduced tribalism into politics. Ultimately, this could benefit Reform and other anti-progressive parties. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio would no doubt cite Gorton and Denton as a prime example of what he calls “civilizational erasure.”
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