Comment by Inayat Bunglawala:
Muslims cast few votes for Tories
As a general election looms, David Cameron should be on a charm offensive and not skipping key community events.
As Nick Spencer
highlighted yesterday on Cif, research carried out by his Theos thinktank has found that UK Muslims are three times more likely to vote for the Labour party than the Conservatives. The Theos/ComRes research found that:
"If there were a general election tomorrow, 35% of voting Muslims (meaning those Muslims who claim they are more likely than not to vote) would vote Labour. This compares with 22% of voting Christians and 23% of the entire voting population. By comparison, whereas 30% of the voting population would tick the Conservative box, only 13% of voting Muslims would do so."
The Labour party had traditionally been the party of choice for most Muslims but this support was seen to have drastically reduced in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the main beneficiaries being the Liberal Democrats. In 2004, an
ICM poll for the Guardian found that voting intentions among UK Muslims was Lib Dem (41%), Labour (32%) and Conservative (16%).
The Tories failed at the time to gain from Muslim disenchantment with the Labour party, almost certainly because they were viewed – entirely correctly – as being enthusiastic supporters of both wars. What is more interesting is that the Tories are still failing to draw away significant Muslim support from Labour despite David Cameron's recent attempts to position the party as being more inclusive of minority groups.
Last night, the Muslim Council of Britain – the UK's largest Islamic umbrella body – held a gala dinner in London at which the Labour party was represented by the justice secretary, Jack Straw and the communities secretary, John Denham. The Lib Dem party leader, Nick Clegg, was also present. As elections are fast approaching this is perhaps not so very surprising. What was surprising, however, was that no frontbencher from the Conservative party deemed it worthwhile attending this event, which brought together more than 400 key figures from the UK's diverse Muslim communities.
The Tory no-show was a shame, as I think they would have strongly agreed with the keynote speaker,
Professor Tariq Ramadan, as he emphasised to the audience the importance of what he called the "three Ls": loyalty, law and language. Loyalty, according to Ramadan, was not the false loyalty of unquestioning support for government policies. It was a more precious loyalty based on a concern for the well-being of all British citizens and being prepared to loudly criticise government policies when necessary. Similarly, the wisdom of Ramadan's insistence on working to uphold the equality of all citizens before the law would, one hopes, have been appreciated by Tory ears.
The Theos research appears to confirm that UK Muslim support for Labour is on the increase once again after a torrid few years under the Blairite former cabinet ministers Ruth Kelly and her successor at the Communities and Local Government (CLG) department, Hazel Blears.
Denham, who inherited the CLG role following the not-so-tragic resignation of Blears last summer over the expenses scandal, is very popular in Muslim communities, not least because he, along with Robin Cook, was one of the very few ministers who actually resigned their government positions rather than vote in support of the Iraq war.
Additionally, since his appointment at the CLG, Denham has made clear that the government no longer wishes all UK Muslims to be viewed through the prism of terrorism and the security threat. His speech last night, reiterated some key points he made to
a Prevent conference at the end of last year which noted that the foremost worries of many Muslim families were very much the same as those of other families right across the country:
"While al-Qaida-inspired terrorism is a serious problem which needs to be tackled it must never been seen as the defining issue for British Muslims; or for the government's relationship with Muslim communities nationally or locally; or for public agencies like the police or for the media. I know, and you know, that the typical Muslim family – like families across the country – is much more concerned about jobs, housing and education than they are about violent extremism. And for the vast majority of Muslims, as for members of other faiths, their faith is a source of comfort, inspiration and strong values – not a call to violence."
Denham's observation concerning Muslim families certainly rings true to me. And with the latest polls showing that we may be heading for a hung parliament, the Conservative party leadership could yet come to regret their needlessly offensive snub last night.
Source
Inayat Bunglawala is the founder and chair of Muslims4UK,a group set up to celebrate the UK's democratic traditions and promote active Muslim engagement in our society.
He is also a spokesperson at the Muslim Council of Britain and has been active in many UK Islamic organisations since he joined The Young Muslims UK in 1987. He has written pieces about Islam and current affairs over the past few years for The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Express, The Observer and The Sun.
In August 2005, Inayat was appointed by the Home Office as the convenor of a working group on Tackling Extremism. He writes here in a personal capacity.