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I don’t know about you but when I hear cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ on a day that’s usually devoted to electing people who will sort out your bins I think something’s gone terribly wrong. And that’s exactly what I thought in recent days as I watched the results of the latest local elections in England and Wales roll in.
The results were both fascinating and worrying in equal measure. It was in the local ward of Gipton and Harehills, in Leeds, where Green candidate Mothin Ali (pictured above), wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf symbolic of Palestinian resistance, celebrated his election to the local council by lifting his arms and declaring: “We will not be silent. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu Akbar!”
And nor was Mr Ali the only candidate who’s clearly much more bothered about the events in Gaza than speaking about local issues, here in Britain. In the days since, it’s emerged that several other candidates, many of them standing for the Greens or as independents, have variously posted antisemitic comments and played down or simply denied the October 7th atrocities committed against Israel. As Fraser Myers writes:
“Akhmed Yakoob, an independent endorsed by George Galloway, put Palestine at the front and centre of his campaign for the West Midlands mayoralty. He secured 69,000 votes, almost enough to deprive Labour’s Richard Parker of his victory over Tory incumbent Andy Street. Labour lost control of Oldham Council for the first time in 13 years, thanks partly to a surge in support for independents who campaigned on Palestine. Activists in Bradford celebrated their city’s apparent rejection of ‘Zionism’ (even as Labour retained control of the council). A BBC analysis of 58 local-council wards found that in areas where more than one in five voters is Muslim Labour’s share of the vote plummeted by 21 percentage points.”
What’s going on? Well, on the surface this might appear to be just a few bad apples who found their way into local politics as a means of expressing their outrage over events in Gaza. But look a little deeper and you’ll soon realise it’s about something much more sinister and worrying —the rise of sectarianism in British politics.
While both the Greens and the Government’s independent advisor on antisemitism have announced they’ll investigate the outcome of the local elections, to me the real surprise is why anyone should be surprised by this at all.
As I’ve written before, and as I elaborate below, what we’re now witnessing in Britain is the rise of a dark new sectarianism which risks reshaping our entire politics and society around zero-sum group conflicts pitted along racial, ethnic, or religious lines.
And at the heart of this is what I’ve called a toxic alliance between a radicalising woke Left, in this case represented by the Greens, and a not insignificant number of British Muslims, who hold radical if not openly extremist views on issues such as the October 7th attacks, free speech, and the role of Islam in British society.
Let me explain what I mean by this and why these events symbolise this significant and very worrying development in British politics.
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