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July 6, 2024 - 8:00am
With Reform UK making significant headway in white working-class Brexitland and pro-Gaza independents making their mark in areas with notable South Asian Muslim populations, Labour’s so-called “supermajority” is less solid than it looks. But there is one part of the country which has provided steadfast comprehensive electoral support for the party in recent times.
Labour’s most loyal and deepest heartland is now South London, especially in the constituencies with relatively high non-Muslim black populations which do not care for the Right. Rather, they are concerned about bread-and-butter issues such as the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and are not as emotionally invested in the Gaza crisis.
While Labour nearly lost new Health Secretary Wes Streeting as the MP for Ilford North at the hands of pro-Gaza independent Leanne Mohamed, it had no such struggles in South London. In Lewisham East, which has a black population of 27% according to the 2021 Census, Labour’s Janet Daby was re-elected with 58% of the vote — a majority of over 18,000 votes. In Erith & Thamesmead, where nearly three in 10 voters are black (29%), Daby’s party colleague Abena Oppong-Asare was re-elected with 55% of the vote — a majority of over 16,000. Elsewhere, Labour candidates won the new Vauxhall and Camberwell Green constituency with a majority of over 15,000 votes and in Peckham by a similar margin.
While Labour’s support among Sunni Muslims in Britain’s Pakistani-origin and Bangladeshi-heritage areas has dropped sharply, largely because of Keir Starmer’s positioning on Israel-Gaza, black Britons — who are heavily concentrated in the capital’s southern boroughs — represent Labour’s most devoted voters. An ethnic-minority pre-election survey by YouGov found that nearly three in four black voters intended to vote Labour (72%) compared to just 44% of the merged Pakistani-Bangladeshi category.
If these high levels of support for Labour were replicated in Birmingham Ladywood — where one in four voters are black — it is plausible that black voters (especially Caribbean non-Muslims) helped Labour incumbent and now-Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood stave off the fierce challenge posed by another pro-Gaza independent candidate, Akhmed Yakoob.
In the UK’s increasingly volatile and unpredictable electoral marketplace, it is now Labour’s black female MPs in South London who are sitting on hefty majorities and representing some of the party’s most faithful voters.
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