If Keir Starmer isn’t careful, Gaza could do for him what the Iraq war did for Blair

Keir Starmer with West Midlands mayor Richard Parker in Birmingham on 4 May 2024: ‘More than 70,000 people voted for Akhmed Yakoob, the independent pro-Palestinian candidate.’ Photograph: Jacob King/PA

How does Keir Starmer avoid Gaza doing to his Labour party what the Iraq war did to Tony Blair’s a generation ago? Or does the prospect not really worry him?

Amid so many good results for Labour in last week’s English local elections, Gaza’s undiminished capacity to drive a significant minority of Labour voters elsewhere cannot be overlooked. Israel’s latest incursion into Rafah, and the possibility of a full military onslaught there, is a reminder that, though it is fairly far down the list of the conflict’s grim realities, the Gaza war is increasingly disruptive for Labour.

History tends not to repeat itself, so equating Gaza with Iraq too mechanistically would be misleading. In 2003, after all, Labour was firmly in power, not still in opposition, as it is now. Blair wanted Britain directly involved in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, whereas Starmer, like the UK government itself, is largely on the sidelines of the Gaza conflict. Blair liked to lead from the front. Starmer is more cautious. And anti-war feeling today is focused more on humanitarian issues than on actual deeds by British politicians.

Nevertheless, the echoes are not just emotional. They are also, more importantly, electoral. Blair’s Iraq policy cost Labour a fifth of its vote in 2005. Opposition to him became personal, accelerating his departure and opening British politics to a Conservative comeback under David Cameron. Iraq also contributed to Labour’s long eclipse in Scotland, boosted the Liberal Democrats and spawned a new Muslim and student focused party led by George Galloway. It helped, over time, to generate Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, and it hangs over Blair’s reputation and Labour politics to this day.

Last week, amid its mayoral and council victories, Labour’s vote collapsed in places including Blackburn, Kirklees and Oldham. Many other northern and Midlands councils recorded big anti-Labour swings. More than 70,000 people voted for Akhmed Yakoob, the independent pro-Palestinian candidate, in the West Midlands mayoral contest. Where more than 20% of the electorate was Muslim, the Labour vote fell on average by nearly 18%, according to a survey of 930 wards by Prof Will Jennings, of Southampton University.

The net result, in terms of seats captured by Labour, was a significant underperformance. The party’s successes, which were real, and its lead in the polls, may tempt Starmer and those around him to downplay the hits that Labour suffered over Gaza. That would be a mistake. When Starmer told an interviewer in October that Israel had the right to withhold power and water from civilians in Gaza, he set off a storm. Despite later saying he had been misunderstood and subsequent changes of policy, last week’s elections show that that storm is as strong as ever.

Labour’s election coordinator, Pat McFadden, said at the weekend that Labour would work to regain that lost support. That is wise, although whether McFadden or Starmer have a reconciliation strategy is not clear. But it matters that they try, because what happened last Thursday was significant, for the present and the future.

Labour’s Gaza gulf may not have big implications for the general election, whenever it comes. Parliamentary constituencies are much bigger than council wards. There are not many seats where the Muslim electorate is so large and the Labour majority so narrow as to put Labour in danger. But no one can be totally sure, especially if the war and the killing in Gaza is still going on. Labour MPs in places such as Birmingham and Manchester will be nervous.

Note also that the fall in Labour support was not confined to Muslim voters. The most under-analysed aspect of last Thursday, Manchester university’s Prof Rob Ford told me this week, could be the success of the Green party, which added more than 70 new councillors across England. The Greens have become an increasingly widely established force in local government. They are now in pole position to be the go-to alternative on Labour’s left flank if Starmer becomes prime minister and hits the inevitable rough patch with the public. Green victories last week in parts of Newcastle and Leeds point to a potentially wider breakthrough in future.

Muslim Labour voters are an unusual mix. They are only rarely liberal or secular progressives in the Green or Corbynite sense. Many are socially conservative on women’s rights and sexual orientation. Yet they are highly exercised by foreign policy issues with which they identify. In that sense, they echo something of Britain’s 20th-century Irish Catholic voters, who simultaneously formed the bedrock of repeated anti-abortion campaigns while also remaining committed to Labour as a friend of Ireland.

But here is the key question. Like Blair, Starmer has devoted his party leadership to building a coalition of electoral support for a moderate and centre-left Labour party. His overriding aim is to reassure millions of potential switchers from the Conservatives, especially those who abandoned Labour in 2019, that it is safe to vote Labour again; and then, having done so once, to do so again, in 2028-29. Yesterday’s arrival of the former Conservative Dover MP Natalie Elphicke into his coalition’s ranks is one measure of his success. But can he hold such a broad coalition together for two terms?

It is one thing to build an electoral coalition. It is another to keep it united, especially when things get tough in government and when instincts or interests pull in different directions. Blair found that out after Iraq, though by that stage he probably no longer cared. Boris Johnson found it out after Partygate but was incapable of putting things back together. How Starmer responds when his own coalition’s inevitable crisis comes will help decide whether, unlike Johnson, he is more than a single-term prime minister.

Looked at in this entirely technocratic way, Starmer seems to be taking a dangerous risk. Labour policy on Gaza has unquestionably shifted to become more critical of Israel than it was in October. This week, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, spoke in the Commons against a Rafah offensive, in favour of an immediate ceasefire and for immediate aid to go in to Gaza; he argued that the treatment of people in Gaza could be a war crime, said that an offensive may breach international law, and made direct criticism of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Even so, all this counted for little when Muslim or leftwing Labour voters went to the polls last Thursday. What counted for them still appears to have been the Starmer interview of six months ago. Starmer has made little public effort to soothe, to court and to rebuild relations with these voters. Remaining indifferent to them is a big gamble. No one should pretend it is simple, but the electoral price that is being paid for neglecting them was made very obvious last week. If Rafah spirals into an even greater humanitarian crisis, the political price is likely to become higher still, especially in the long run.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist