LABOUR lost 28% of Asian votes, including BANGLADESH'S

October 12, 2024
LABOUR lost 28% of Asian votes, including BANGLADESH'S


Labour's vote among British Asians, including the Bangladeshi community, fell by 28% in the July national election, according to a new report.

British Bangladeshis favor Labour due to economic factors, with left-wing voters and welfare-oriented voters supporting the party. Poorer members tend to remain loyal, while prosperous and successful members shift towards Conservatives.

The report highlights how party support fell in constituencies such as the east and west Midlands, Yorkshire, and Humber, where pro-Palestinian independents made huge gains. An analysis of voting patterns in the summer election also revealed that the Conservatives maintained their ballot share among British Hindus, mirroring their performance in the 2019 general election. The 'Minorities Report,' issued by the UK in a Changing Europe on looked at the sentiments of Britain's ethnic minority community.The Labour party leads the Conservatives among ethnic minority voters by 29 percentage points, compared to eight percentage points among white voters. The political, social, and economic values of British Indians and British Chinese voters, and to a lesser degree black African voters, are structurally different from other minority groups. Graduate-level education makes non-white Britons more likely to be Conservative. In the July election, the combined vote share of Labour, Greens, and Liberal Democrats was 66% among ethnic minorities.Labour's support among ethnic minorities is an ossified cultural and historical legacy that could disappear quickly, according to a poll. The diversity of political views among ethnic minorities is significant, with many still leaning towards Labour. However, there is growing fragmentation, particularly with British Indians and British Chinese becoming more open to supporting the Conservative Party. This shift in foreign policy positions and the Conservative Party's efforts to appear more multi-racial have altered voter preferences.One of Labour’s biggest losses on the night of July 4 was that of Leicester East, which was held by the party since 1987. Shivani Raja of the Conservatives won the seat – the only gain for the Tories in the 2024 election. Communal tensions broke out in Leicester in summer 2022, with protests and violence among some ethnic groups, said to be fuelled by misinformation spread via social media. Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth lost in Leicester South which is now represented by Shockat Adam, an independent MP, who has been vocal about his support for Palestine.

All these results appear to chime with the concerns of many leading Labour figures that the party’s ambiguous stance on the conflict in Gaza angered voters in some of its most diverse constituencies, especially those with large Muslim populations, the report said.

In five of the seven seats that Labour lost, over 25 per cent of the local population is Muslim. “But these results also point to a deeper phenomenon: that while we often loosely talk about the ethnic minority vote in British general elections as a bloc, in reality there are stark differences in political attitudes between different ethnic communities.