“Sectarian voting and cheating.” So said Nigel Farage in his comment on the Gorton and Denton by-election win for the Green party, and he could be justified.
It will likely be remembered that Gorton and Denton has a really large British-Pakistani population. Traditionally they’ve voted Labour, but on this occasion the Greens’ candidate, Hannah Spencer, exploited what she branded Labour’s failure to support Palestine, accusing them of promoting as a substitute “racist, dog whistle gutter policies”.
Leaflets were issued in Urdu and Bengali proclaiming her support for Palestine and calling on voters “to punish Labour for Gaza”. She was even photographed outside an area mosque wearing a keffiyeh, the normal Middle-Eastern scarf that has develop into such a logo of cultural identity and resistance.
Muslim voters apparently lapped it up, deserting in droves the Labour Party, which has traditionally been seen as championing their interests, in favour of a candidate who was unashamedly giving her support to Islamist demands to crush Israel, and establish a Palestinian state ‘from the river to the ocean’.
But it gets worse. Democracy Volunteers, the polling observer group certified by the Electoral Commission to watch voting and detail suspected electoral fraud, reported “concerningly high levels” of family voting within the Gorton and Denton by-election, the priority being that girls will simply vote as directed by their husbands or fathers – sometimes on multiple occasions – and the practice has subsequently been declared illegal.
However, the polling observer group reported on this occasion the best level of family voting seen at any election of their 10-year history. John Ault, head of Democracy Volunteers, said, “We rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the information now we have collected today on family voting, when put next to other recent by-elections, is incredibly high.”
Should we be alarmed? Yes, we should always. If what has been reported is true, it is a deliberate and unashamed effort to undermine British democracy, exploiting tactical voting to determine the interests of groups which are, at base, hostile to the interests of most people. The Greens’ success is a victory not for environmental democratisation and what they see as a fairer world, but for Islam, which for a lot of its adherents demands total and absolute compliance with Sharia law and obedience to the Prophet Muhammad.
As Britain’s Muslim communities proceed to grow stronger and more quite a few, we’re already seeing their political influence grow and this is important because, unlike followers of other faiths or no faith, they’ve an unusual tendency to vote en bloc, in response to where they feel their best interests will likely be served. Indeed, there have for a while been rumours that the long-term aim is to determine an independent, dedicated Muslim party, which is able to ultimately develop into the dominant force in Government and take control, in order that the UK becomes an Islamic state. Support for Palestine coupled with the expansion in anti-Semitism is an alarming manifestation of what such a victory might mean.
The political aspirations of a worrying proportion of Muslims don’t sit well with British democracy. In Islamic countries, non-believers are all too often barely tolerated, and sectarian violence against other religious groups is common. Christians especially live in peril of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, physical attack and genocide. If such Muslims take political control of the UK, it might be anticipated that the identical behaviour will likely be replicated here.
In her manipulative and unprincipled campaign, Hannah Spencer might imagine she has been very clever, but by her calculated exploitation of racial and spiritual division, she has taken hold of a snake by the tail. Whatever one’s political persuasion and affiliation, the voters of Britain who genuinely value democracy ought to be alarmed.
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