Muslim vote collapse is a major warning sign for Starmer

Amid all the talk of a “seismic” victory for Labour, a closer inspection of the election results so far may leave Sir Keir Starmer with a nagging doubt at the back of his mind.

He already knows that overturning the 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson in 2019 is not a given, as no party in history has achieved that scale of turnaround in one leap.

And he now knows that Labour’s position on Gaza is causing a collapse in the Muslim vote, shown most starkly in Oldham, where his party lost overall control of the council, but also evidenced elsewhere.

Nor can Sir Keir ignore the fact that Harlow, a town he visited twice, including on Wednesday, stayed loyal to the Tories, which can only be interpreted as a sign that voters remain unconvinced by him.

Labour failed to win the Tees Valley mayoral election and there are suggestions that Labour may have disappointing results in some of the other mayoral elections that have yet to declare, despite spending huge sums trying to wrestle them from the Tories.

So while it was undeniably a superb night for Labour, it stopped short of being the sort of slam dunk that would close the books on a Labour majority at the general election.

In Oldham, where a quarter of the population is Muslim, the Labour vote was down by eight percentage points in wards where more than one in 10 voters are Muslims.

In Blackburn with Darwen there was even bleaker news for Labour, where its vote share collapsed by 35 per cent in areas where at least one in 10 people are Muslim, though Labour did retain control of the council.

In the Bastwell and Daisyfield ward, where 84 per cent of the residents are Muslim – the third highest in the country – Labour’s support fell from 85 per cent to 39 per cent as an independent councillor was elected.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, admitted that Sir Keir’s reluctance to back a ceasefire in Gaza had been “an issue” on the doorstep, and independent candidates who stood on a pro-Palestinian platform picked up enough seats to take away the Labour majority.

Labour is also bracing itself for defeat in the high-profile West Midlands mayoral election, where it had believed it could topple Andy Street, the Tory incumbent.

Polling had suggested the result would be too close to call, but Muslim voters appear to have flocked to Akhmed Yakoob, an independent candidate backed by George Galloway, who campaigned heavily on the Gaza issue.

The result is expected on Saturday afternoon, but the Labour candidate, Richard Parker, is gloomy about his prospects.

Labour has already conceded defeat in the Tees Valley mayoral election, where the popular Tory Ben Houchen is expected to retain his post, despite Labour predictions of an upset.

He said: “We’ve had the Labour Party camped here … the shadow cabinet has basically funded the tourism industry here for the last two weeks because they thought they had it and they were nowhere near in the end.”

In London, where Sadiq Khan is expected to win a third term, there are signs that postal votes in Muslim areas are down and that those Muslim voters who are turning out might be voting for independents, suggesting Mr Khan’s vote share will be down.

Labour sources even suggested Mr Khan – seen as a shoo-in by pollsters – could be run close, complaining that the Tories had “rigged the system to make it easier for them to win”.

All of this, of course, comes two months after Mr Galloway won a convincing victory in the Rochdale by-election with a nakedly opportunist appeal to Muslim voters.

Mr Galloway’s Workers Party followed up his by-election win by taking two council seats from Labour in Rochdale, the first it has won in a local election.

Then there is Harlow. On Wednesday, Sir Keir made the second of his campaign visits to the Essex town, leaving no doubt about the importance he placed on it. He even said: “We do need to win in places like Harlow.”

The fact that he didn’t – with the Tories clinging on to control of the council – gives Rishi Sunak some hope that predictions of a Labour landslide in the general election may be premature.

Sir Keir will surely be frustrated that his personal appeal to the voters of Harlow was rejected, a bad portent for the televised leaders’ debates that will be so crucial in a national poll.

In Newcastle, voters elected their first Conservative councillor in 32 years and their first ever Green councillors as Labour suffered a net loss of seats while retaining control of the council.

In South Tyneside, Labour lost 10 seats to independent and Green candidates, which was put down to local issues including bin collections and children’s services.

Labour will, quite rightly, point to significant council wins in places like Rushmoor, which includes Aldershot, home of the Army, as well as Hartlepool, Thurrock and Redditch.

And where Sir Keir has problems retaining the Muslim vote, Mr Sunak has his own difficulties with voters defecting to Reform UK, which came within 118 votes of beating the Tories into second place in the Blackpool South by-election.

It was this result – with Labour winning the seat back from the Tories with a 26 per cent swing – that Sir Keir hailed as “seismic”, though the Conservatives will point out that the tiny turnout of just 32.5 per cent, and the fact that they spent just 11 per cent of their allowable budget defending the seat, will make for a different picture when the general election happens.

Conservative supporters looking for other positives will note that the Liberal Democrats, who had hoped to take councils from them in traditional Tory heartlands, have so far failed to make much of an impact. For example, Hart in Hampshire, a key Lib Dem target, remains in no overall control.

There is still a reluctance from most Tory MPs to change leader before the election, and a snap poll by the influential Conservative Home website showed that six in 10 Tory members think the party should stick with Mr Sunak no matter what the final results turn out to be.

Even if Mr Sunak sees off any talk of a coup, the timing of the election could be determined by these results.

Conservative insiders have confirmed that plans for a July election are in place should Mr Sunak face a confidence vote in Parliament.

If Tory rebels try to force such a vote, Mr Sunak could make a decision to go to the polls instead of facing the vote by MPs.

Only then will we know whether all the talk of a Labour landslide was fantasy or reality.