The numbers that shape Labour’s Middle East policy: 37, 73, 110

This isn’t a column about the rights and wrongs of such a policy but rather about the why. In that context, it’s fascinating to look at the list of Labour MPs who signed last week’s letter to the prime minister pushing for recognition now, and to see how many of them are in those 110 seats – and even more fascinating to see how many of the signatories have been supporters of Labour Friends of Israel. With a majority of the Cabinet reportedly pressing for recognition, understanding this electoral demography is vital.

Take Wes Streeting, the health secretary and MP for Ilford North, which has long had a significant Jewish population. Far be it for me to suggest that Streeting’s long-standing support for Israel has been based on political expediency, but Ilford North’s Jewish vote is now dwarfed by its Muslim vote. There are 27,166 Muslims in Ilford North, of which (according to one analysis) around 19,000 are on the electoral roll. In the general election last July, Streeting’s 2019 majority of over 5,000 collapsed to 528 in the face of a challenge by independent Muslim candidate Leanne Mohamad. And guess who is said now to be one of the leading advocates of immediate recognition of a Palestinian state within the Cabinet? Streeting is also one of those who has been pushing for the government’s move to define Islamophobia (the dangerous consequences of which I wrote about earlier this month).

When it comes to self-preservation, nothing sharpens the mind more than the threat of defeat – and in Streeting’s case, defeat at the next election seems more certain than merely likely, given the growing strength of the sectarian Muslim vote.

Streeting is obviously just one example of the impact of this new phenomenon of Muslim voters voting as sectarian Muslims, but its impact across British politics is by a long way the most important factor that needs to be considered to understand the direction of travel. The government’s entire Middle East policy is determined by this, as is much of its domestic policy.

It's important to understand the converse of this, too. Under Kemi Badenoch, the Conservatives have been clear and principled in their defence of Israel’s right – indeed, her need – to defend itself from and to wipe out Hamas. Just last week, for example, she was coruscating in her criticism of President Macron’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state which, she said, “outside any direct negotiations, while hostages are still held, undermines the prospects of a lasting peace and sends a dangerous message to the world…The only path to peace that will see an end to the appalling suffering in Gaza is the complete eradication of Hamas.”

In large measure such statements are, of course, because Badenoch is herself clear-minded and principled about these issues. But she is facilitated in feeling able to speak her mind by the near total absence of the same demographic pressures on the Conservatives as Labour faces. She and the Tories face many electoral worries, obviously – some of them existential – but they do not include a threat from sectarian Muslim candidates. So we are now seeing a much greater and deeper divide on Middle East policy between the two parties emerging – as well as on relevant domestic issues.

This also helps explain why Reform is able to speak increasingly for “middle England”. The mere fact that it is able to raise issues around asylum and immigration to which Labour merely plays lip service is a product of the increasing importance of the sectarian Muslim vote in determining how Labour acts. Labour cannot go, in other words, into areas and policies where Reform is able to make great headway.

British politics is in many ways more complicated and uncertain than ever before, with new parties and new coalitions of votes emerging while old alliances shatter. But one aspect of this new politics is relatively simple to understand: 37, 73 and 110.