Independent MPs won support by harnessing anger over Gaza. Their success reflects a wider sense the party is not listening

It’s always telling, which votes are considered valid and which aren’t. Which ones are “tactical”, which express “legitimate concerns” and which are merely “sectarian”. The four independent candidates who won in last week’s election by harnessing frustrations about Gaza are already being treated as a worrying sign of the emergence of sectarian politics. The implication is that it’s only Muslims who care about Gaza, and that they do so at the expense of their domestic concerns and loyalties. The truth is that Gaza’s resonance stretches across diverse demographics. It is both connected to and informed by other political grievances, and it has become the expression of something that our political climate has made it difficult to countenance – that voters can have principles they care about without this being an indication of extremism or irrelevance.

There has been a persistent tendency to treat frustrations about Gaza as crude, separatist and confined to a small but vocal minority. Despite poll after poll indicating that the majority of the public supports a ceasefire, politicians – in particular the leadership of the Labour party – continued to ignore the issue. As a result, four candidates campaigning centrally on Gaza took four seats, one of them Leicester South: thereby deposing Jonathan Ashworth, the erstwhile shadow paymaster general. Labour HQ can comfort itself that it’s only a small number in the grand scheme of things, that Gaza is (hopefully) not a permanent issue, and that in five years’ time it will no longer be relevant. That it’s only Muslims who are concentrated in high numbers in a small number of seats. But those four independent candidates won because non-Muslims voted for them too, and because many people didn’t vote at all.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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