The electoral triumph of an Islamo-Leftist coalition in the Gorton and Denton by-election in late February has shocked Britain, sparking recriminations of sectarianism rooted in British-Muslim loyalties to Pakistan and Bangladesh, hatred of Israel, family voting, and manipulation by NGO networks.
Hannah Spencer.
(NCarrGreenParty via Wikimedia)
Hannah Spencer, a 34-year-old left-wing plumber running for the Green Party, trounced her rivals Matthew Goodwin (Reform UK) and Angeliki Stogia (Labour), after appealing almost exclusively to Muslims and running her ad campaign in Urdu and Bengali.
In the election held on February 26 in the county of Greater Manchester in northwest England, Spencer secured 14,980 votes (40.7 percent), defeating Goodwin in second place with 10,578 votes, while Labour lagged with 9,364 votes. The historic victory has given the Green Party its first parliamentary seat in northern England in a constituency that was a Labour stronghold for decades.
Gorton and Denton has a Muslim population of 28.4 percent, with 39.0 percent identifying as Christians, according to the 2021 census. Of the 119,094 inhabitants in the constituency, 77,501 are on the electoral roll, although only 47.62 percent of the electorate turned out to vote.
Using Linguistic Chauvinism to Woo Muslim Voters
“Appealing almost solely to Muslim voters might seem like a strange way for a major party to go about winning a by-election in Manchester,” Hugo Timms wrote in an article for Spiked titled “The Greens’ shameless embrace of Islamic sectarianism.”
In a video, Spencer introduces herself to Muslims of Pakistani origin in Urdu. A female narrator then says in Urdu: “Shopkeepers, drivers, cleaners, mothers—it is we who keep this area running.” Pictures of Goodwin flash across the screen. “A cruel politician can win if we don’t vote Green to stop Reform,” the voiceover warns. “They want to break up our communities, deport families who have lived here for years, and tax people born abroad even more.”
The video then injects the Hindu-Muslim conflict into the U.K. election by showing an image of India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The image shows Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy in the background.
The footage also shows clips of ICE agents arresting migrants, drone footage of the flattened Gaza Strip, and an image of Steve Bannon gesturing in what seems like a Nazi salute. The video ends by wishing viewers “Ramadan Mubarak” (Happy Ramadan).
Whipping Up Anti-Israel Islamic Resentment
Palestinian flags featured on Spencer’s flyers. She repeatedly declared during the campaign that she believed a “genocide” was taking place in Gaza.
Her campaign flyers featured Spencer wearing a keffiyeh while posing in front of a mosque. The leaflet reads, “Stop Islamophobia. Stop Reform” in English. The reverse, in Urdu, reads: “Labour must be punished for Gaza. To give Muslims a strong voice, vote for the Greens.”
Spencer also accused Labour of failing to support Palestine and promoting instead “racist, dog-whistle gutter policies.”
“Gaza has been a difficult issue for Labour since before it entered government, and the Greens made no secret of throwing their weight behind the Palestinian cause throughout the campaign,” The New Arab explained.
When asked about her use of foreign policy as a campaign issue, Spencer said, “I am really clear and really proud about my record of standing up for people in Palestine.” The Greens’ agenda calls for an arms embargo on Israel, a moratorium on intelligence sharing with Jerusalem, and lifting the proscription on Palestine Action, a group whose members have engaged in acts of vandalism and sabotage against U.K. military assets.
Leading Islamist clerics also encouraged Muslims to vote along sectarian lines. Predicting that Britain was about to “witness a transformative moment in its political history,” Shaykh Haitham al-Haddad, a British-Palestinian jurist, urged Muslims to vote based on “our Islamic principles” and “uphold our own moral red lines like opposing those who supported the Zionists as they committed genocide against our brothers and sisters.”
Al-Haddad, who has been associated with hardline Salafism, said Spencer had “condemned the ongoing genocide in Gaza, offered solidarity to British Muslims, and denounced racism and Islamophobia,” while Goodwin had called for a halt to Muslim migration and “accused British Muslims of having ‘views that are fundamentally opposed to British values and ways of life.’”
Family Voting and Election Manipulation
The UK-based NGO Democracy Volunteers has reported widespread family voting during the Gorton and Denton election. The practice, which violates the secret ballot, allows two people to enter a polling booth together, thereby permitting one to control the other’s voting choice.
The NGO’s observer team witnessed family voting in 15 of the 22 polling stations it monitored. John Ault, director of Democracy Volunteers, said that the team had seen “the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK.”
“We rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high,” he added.
Responding to complaints from parliamentarians Nigel Farage and James Cleverly, the Electoral Commission noted it takes “allegations of family voting very seriously,” warning that “it is a criminal offence to attempt to pressure someone to vote in a certain way.”
British voters, who genuinely value democracy, should be alarmed.
Meanwhile, CCHDWatch has published a report alleging a coalition of NGOs subsidized by transnational philanthropic networks deployed data infrastructure, narrative branding, demographic targeting, and parallel mobilization that operated outside conventional party spending limits and regulatory oversight to influence election results.
The Muslim Vote organization issued an explicit endorsement of Spencer and mobilized the constituency’s approximately 28-to-30 percent Muslim population through Urdu-language materials, mosque-level organizing, and digital campaigns framed around dissatisfaction with Labour’s national leadership and stance on international conflicts.
The newly formed Your Party, led by the pro-Islamic left-wing politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, “provided left-flank legitimacy by endorsing Spencer as the authentic voice of socialist change,” it added. “In a low-turnout contest, these coordinated blocs provided the demographic blade of the pincer.”
‘Sleepwalking into Sectarian Politics’
“The by-election appears to be a chilling example of sectarian voting at its most dangerous,” Lynda Rose, director of Voice for Justice UK, told Focus on Western Islamism. “There are already strong indications that we could soon see the emergence of a Muslim party, specifically designed to promote Muslim interests and ultimately turn Britain into an Islamic state.”
“Spencer, with her declared support for Palestine and hostility towards Israel, has only made this more likely,” Rose warned. “Islamic rule, demanding absolute compliance with Sharia law—with open discrimination against non-believers—sits at odds with British democracy. British voters, who genuinely value democracy, should be alarmed.”
“We are sleepwalking into sectarian politics,” Conservative MP Claire Coutinho warned. “A world where conflicts in foreign lands drive votes and political parties do not have to put forward credible policies to address our own nation’s challenges. This will leave us all poorer and more divided.”
However, Wajid Akhter, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), dismissed critics, remarking that “these smears are more reflective of a desperate political class not willing to give ordinary British voters the dignity they deserve.”
“While the Westminster bubble will be poring over this result, others will inevitably reach to the gutter by accusing British Muslim residents of Gorton & Denton of voting along ‘sectarian lines,’” he noted.
