Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

Yes that is the whole complaint. It is illegal.

[Valmy]

Yes that is the whole complaint. It is illegal.

Well ok I guess I agree with Reform on this 

But "family voting" is a weird term for this.

[Sheilbh]

I don't understand. We are not allowed to talk to our family members about politics because it might influence them?

Family voting is banned. It's basically husbands voting for their wives. The most blatant is that they will go in to the voting booth together - as I say this is a known abuse within postal voting. I used to live in Tower Hamlets where there's been a number of problems and electoral law issues. Going to vote you would often see men escorting women to vote right up to the polling booth and you'd see groups of men outside polling stations (not official party workers so not within the canvassing boundary) who would approach British Bengali women who were unescorted and take them to the booth - they never approached me or white women. In Tower Hamlets I think some polling stations now have police stationed outside them to prevent this - as do some centres where they do the counting because there was at least one election when a group of men tried to storm the count.

At the more benign (ish?) level, anyone who has any experience canvassing (at least for Labour) or speaking to people who have (in private over a pint sort of conversation) will have had the experience of knocking on doors and being told by women that the husband decides politics.

As I say there is nothing new about this - it's been talked about and studied and reported on for a very long time. To an extent I actually think this election is not reflective of that bcause the historic bloc voting behaviour was very much associated with Labour. I think, as the Gaza Independent MP noted, to an extent this is Muslim voters (especially young Muslims) breaking out of that system and into a more fulsome democratic engagement.

I would add that certainly in the UK, it has largely been an aspect in South Asian politics and not specific to Muslims. There's been evidence of these issues in Sikh and Hindu communities too. And to an extent it is what immigrant and diaspora communities often do as they enter democratic politics which is organising within a machine - if they are able to deliver votes, they get some of the spoils. That's observed in other communities too. I think what's distinctive is that it has (so far) not really faded away as it has in other communities and often overlaps with political allegiances in South Asia. I think with globalisation, the internet, cheaper flights etc it is easier to keep those ties and allegiance going. At the last Indian election there were BJP rallies here and increased tensions in some areas because of BJP activism. Some is sympathy but some is basically overlapping political machines in, say, Bangladesh or India and Britain.

So I've mentioned before but when I lived in Tower Hamlets there was a huge split within the Labour Party with a faction leaving/being forced out, lots of (largely false) allegations of Islamism, lots of (largely true) allegations of corruption etc - from my understanding a lot of that basically reflected Awami League and BNP factions within the British Bengali community. Those factions basically aligned with left/right factions within the local Labour Party. On the issues they were basically very similar. When George Galloway (successfully) ran in that seat, during the campaign he travelled to Sylhet (which is the province most British Bengalis in the constitueny come from) to meet political bosses. That wasn't a waste of time by him.

Edit: And in my experience even if not following women into the booths I've definitely seen husbands or those young men hanging around polling stations point to which is the correct answer on the ballot paper.

[Valmy]

Beyond insuring that only one person at a time is in a voting booth and their vote remains secret I don't think there is anything more you can do about that. It is a person's right to let somebody else tell them how to vote and vote accordingly.

[garbon]

Yes that is the whole complaint. It is illegal.

Well ok I guess I agree with Reform on this 

But "family voting" is a weird term for this.

I mean it is the UK so I would thing this would be a given.

[Sheilbh]

Beyond insuring that only one person at a time is in a voting booth and their vote remains secret I don't think there is anything more you can do about that. It is a person's right to let somebody else tell them how to vote and vote accordingly.

I agree on there's not much you can do on how people reach their decision. But the flipside is you should be pretty militant on the secrecy of the ballot box. So local council staff should absolutely be enforcing that. There is a bit of a row about this as the council say these monitors didn't inform them on the day, the monitors say they did. If the council were turning a blind eye to men escorting their wives into the ballot booth and going with them that's an issue.

But postal ballots are another issue. I think I said this at the time when votre ID was introduced - there's really basically no evidence of that type of voter fraud, but there have been concerns around postal voting since it was introduced. I can't find it but I absolutely remember a BBC report (I think about Bradford and about Galloway) with people basically giving their postal ballots to the local political "boss" to complete for them.

I also think there is an issue around influence and intimidation from the groups of young men escorting people to vote which is why the police were necessary to enforce a cordon around some polling stations.

[Norgy]

It probably has its own dirty clubs in Soho, doesn't it? 

[Valmy]

I agree on there's not much you can do on how people reach their decision. But the flipside is you should be pretty militant on the secrecy of the ballot box. So local council staff should absolutely be enforcing that.

Agreed. People should not even be allowed to voluntarily show their ballot to somebody else.

[Sheilbh]

By the by, just as a couple of examples of the overlap of political networks and how diasporas can stay involved in poliics with globalisation. Just yesterday Bangladesh issued an Interpol red notice for the arrest of the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq who has been convicted (in absentia) of corruption - rather unfortunately she was Keir Starmer's anti-corruption minister - related to her aunt, Sheikh Hasina who was the authoritarian/illiberal democrat Awami League PM of Bangladesh who was overthrown a year or two ago.

Another I think more interesting example is Mohammed Sarwar who is the father of the Scottish Labour Party leader, Anas Sarwar. Mohammed Sarwar was I think the leader of Glasgow council for a while - certainly a big player in Glasgow politics. He then became a Labour MP for a Glasgow seat until 2010 when he stepped down. Gordon Brown nominated him for a peerage but this was blocked following advice from HMRC. He then has an entire second career in Pakistani politics - he's twice Governor of Punjab (once under Nawaz Sharif's party, once for Imran Khan's) and a Senator in Pakistan.

And I think diasporas have always maybe retained an interest in the politics back home - just look at Irish-Americans. But with remittances and the internet and easier, cheaper air travel - there is just less distance. So Sarwar's career is exceptional but I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes more common.

There's less of this with Indian politics because I don't think India allows for dual citizenship. But there's growing BJP/Tory overlap. It's probably also relevant that for national elections (so MPs) the UK allows anyone who is a lawful resident and a citizen of a Commonwealth country to vote.

[garbon]

Yeah India doesnt allow it but I think you can get some sort of ID card that still allows you most rights bar things like standing for office and owning farmland.

[Razgovory]

I think Muslims (including people who are not Muslim but "appear" Muslim) experience discrimination, both on a structural and sort of "everyday" level that is somewhat analogous to racism. I think that's what Islamophobia usefully describes.

I think it's a huge problem in Europe, including the UK. I think part of the problem is that in the framing of it I think we are downstream of the US - part of this is simply that in the US there are people who have thought through aspects of racism more and have expressed that. But I think that does mean that some of the framing is from the American experience which I think understandably centres on anti-black racism and white supremacy in the context of a slave society. Whereas I think Islamophobia is as important to the development of European identities (I think the Islamic world is, to use the overly-academic phrase, Europe's constitutive other) - and interacts with race - but I don't think we have had the same level of thought (or activism actually) in this area. So the framing that can apply sometimes fits uneasily and in a way that can give European bigots a bit of an out.

Is it right to call Islamophobia racism? Probably not. Is that definitional argument much more than angels dancing on the head of a pin? Not really.

Edit: I'd add the leading anti-Islamophobia group in the UK (equivalent to the Community Safety Trust) condemned the Green ads as promoting sectarian division. As I mentioned and garbon flagged all the big parties have some record of this - I don't think it will lead anywhere good if the parties are playing with that stuff every 4-5 years because a vote's a vote.

I remember a quote from Linda Sarsour. 

"when I wasn't wearing a hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City. Wearing hijab made you know that I was Muslim."

She now Identifies as a Person of Color.  I find that deeply weird.

[Norgy]

Have you tried looking at the Internet?

[crazy canuck]

Muslims should not be allowed to vote or hold citizenship in the West--once people realize that you will have less problems of that sort.

OVB's racism raises its ugly head once again.  Based on past experience, most of you will say nothing. Some of you will agree with him silently. And the most odious of you will come to his defence.

I put him on ignore a long time ago. So it is true I won't say anything but that's because I don't see it.

Fair, and good for your mental health

[Sheilbh]

The Green candidate is/was a plumber with a working class background; she made comments about how working hard doesn't work any more as most of the money is siphoned off by assorted rentiers, landlords and billionaires. I reckon that she will have cleaned up on the lefty vote.

I just want to come back to this because I think it's key. I think they chose a really good candidate and all of the panic about Muslim voters going for the Green (and I am uncomfortable with some of the Green campaign - like that campaign or going on the Five Pillars podcast) - their candidate was an atheist plumber. Their leader is gay and Jewish.

This was a rout and clearly was not because Muslims got propagandized into voting Green. The message is that Labour is failing and failing to take care of their left flank.

A couple of points on this.

On the take care of the left - it would be great if that were the extent of the government's problems. But I often find myself of Man United things with Labour at the minutes (Sir Keir Starmer - Labour's Amorim?) - and I think we're more in this territory than just do this one thing


The other thing is that as I've said this constituency is a bit weird. It was jammed together by the Boundary Commission and broadly speaking there is a bit (in Tameside) that is basically "Red Wall" - whiter, more working class, more British-born and there is another bit (in Manchester) that is basically a mix of classic Labour city seats one bit is more like other post-industrial with a large Muslim community, and the other is around university and full of students and graduates. The terrifying story for Labour is that it's vote collapsed in both of those areas (to put it in another way though - the Greens and Reform are both populist anti-establishment parties and they won 65% of the vote).

The problem is if you extrapolate from that that Labour need to turn left. Because bluntly there are a lot more seats like Tameside than Manchester. So you should never extrapolate out from a byelection. It's meaningless (for example the Tories and Lib Dems disappear in the byelection because they never stood a chance). Having said that, if you do apply put the swing in that byelection into a national calculator () then Labour collapse to under 50 seats, the Greens do very well and get about 100-150 seats - but Reform win 400+. Reform didn't win but they still did pretty well - just the Greens were really good.

But in the constituency Labour's entire pitch was that the Greens couldn't win, it was a two-horse race and Labour were the only party to keep out Reform. In fact Labour came third and I think that just blows up what - from what I can see and "strategy" here is doing a lot of work - has been Starmer's political strategy for the last six months or so. The whole message has been to try and boil everything down to Starmer v Farage because that's about the only fight Starmer can still win.