n the streets of the West Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen, voters are uttering phrases that have in the past chilled the bones of Labour canvassers in the party’s fallen heartlands of Scotland and the so-called red wall. “Labour have abandoned us,” say some; “we are going to teach them a lesson,” say others. They are disproportionately – but not exclusively – Muslims in a constituency in which a fifth of voters are of Asian heritage, and their disillusionment has an angry edge. Ahead of the byelection on 1 July, the Labour hierarchy appears to be stuck in the patterns of remote complacency that we have seen before. The mistakes that saw its historic loss of Hartlepool in the May bylection, and the collapse of core parts of its support over the course of a generation, risk being repeated again. Some Labour councillors – who are keen not to be identified publicly, fearing being denounced for disloyalty – claim that on a number of streets that delivered overwhelming support for their party in the 2019 general election, residents now hurl abuse at their canvassers. George Galloway joining the race at the end of May for the Workers Party of Britain sent tremors through Labour’s campaign. One of Britain’s most divisive politicians, he has several comprehensive defeats stuffed in his belt – most recently in Scotland – but also two astonishing victories over Labour in east London in the 2005 general election and in the 2012 Bradford West byelection, just a few miles down the road from Batley. There are over three million Muslims in Britain, and in the 2019 election, an astonishing 86% of Muslim voters said they backed Labour. They are core Labour voters. This is an important point to emphasise, because if Keir Starmer’s party is defeated here – though that is far from certain – then a narrative will still form that this is a freakish, unrepresentative result. But a failure to acknowledge British Muslims as key pillars of Labour’s now crumbling electoral coalition is fuelling the crisis for the party. I meet Hasan Badat in a takeaway across from Batley town hall. He remains a Labour member, though probably not for long, given he is campaigning for Galloway, and he tells me that Muslims are “treated like dirt” by the party. Resentment over the selection of the Labour candidate has not helped. Kim Leadbeater bursts with charisma – her campaigning zeal leaves her team exhausted – and she has impeccable local roots; but Muslim party members resentfully mutter that candidates from their community were overlooked because Leadbeater is the sister of former Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a fascist terrorist five years ago. What threatens Labour in this West Yorkshire community is the spectre of “pasokification”, a process describing the disintegration of social-democratic parties in Europe, named after the dramatically swift liquidation of Greece’s Pasok during the eurozone crisis. When, shortly after New Labour’s 1997 landslide, Peter Mandelson reportedly declared that working-class voters “had nowhere else to go”, he reflected a hubris at the top that “core” or “heartland” voters were banked, come what may, leaving Labour to tailor its policy prospectus solely to meet the needs of affluent swing voters. Scotland was the first to test this theory to destruction: the nation that produced Labour’s first leaders and where its last two prime ministers were born delivered 41 seats for the party in 2010, a tally that was wiped out, save one, five years later. Families with a Labour-voting tradition spanning generations, from Glasgow’s estates to Edinburgh’s tenements, now spit “red Tories” at their former political home. In England, the supposed red wall is more complicated: Labour actually secured the same vote share there in 2019 as it did in 2010, and the party’s electoral rout is partly explained by the Tories cannibalising much of the historic Lib Dem and then Ukip vote, and by younger voters with few job prospects moving elsewhere. But Labour canvassers repeatedly encountered the same phenomenon: a sense of betrayal and abandonment among some older voters. While most of the electorate heavily rejected Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election, Yunus Lunat, a solicitor who became the first Muslim to sit on the Football Association’s council and emphasises he does not personally share Corbyn’s politics, nonetheless believes that most British Muslims were “happy” with his leadership. The former leader’s history of supporting Palestinian national self-determination and opposing Islamophobia – combined with radical domestic policies that resonated with a minority suffering from acute levels of deprivation – undoubtedly proved decisive factors. Yet according to a survey published this week, while Muslim support for Labour overall remains strong, Starmer himself is in negative territory. A perceived silence on Islamophobia and retreat from international issues has left many Muslim voters feeling discarded after the 2019 rout. When one Mail on Sunday columnist declared, “Red Wall voters think Labour cares more about the Palestinians than them”, he did not acknowledge that red wall voters include, say, many Muslims in places such as Batley – as well as some non-Muslims – who do care about issues of international justice. Take Hanif Mayat, who was elected as a local Labour councillor under Tony Blair. He declares Labour “picked the wrong Miliband” in 2010, “because of the unions”, but expresses anger about Corbyn’s treatment and believes Palestinian justice has been abandoned. He’s now campaigning for Galloway. The belief of many Labour figures that international issues are of fringe interest to voters collides with political reality in a constituency like Batley and Spen. As I listen to Galloway rant over Labour condemning fans for booing England footballers who take the knee, he sounds like an anti-woke rightwinger; but it is his fiery speeches against the Iraq war and Israeli occupation that many locals are familiar with, and they mob him as we walk down one street. In contrast, Starmer’s recent sudden flag-waving for the Palestinian cause at prime minister’s questions is widely and correctly resented as mere opportunism, driven by panic over Labour’s prospects in Batley and Spen. Meanwhile, Starmer’s recent withdrawal from an iftar because an attender supports boycotting Israeli dates has been noticed by some in the constituency. Leadbetter is clearly respected and liked by many constituents, but she seems unable to answer, say, if she would support an arms boycott against Israel. The sense that Labour has no clear stance in the age of Starmer is understandably pervasive. Labour’s existential problem is profound and long predates Starmer, even if his team were driven by an arrogant presumption that they marked the return of the “grownups” to the party’s leadership, who believed that salting the Earth would restore credibility among sceptical voters without haemorrhaging existing support. Yet first as tragedy then as farce, the same fatal error – of believing “core” voters had nowhere else to go – is being disastrously repeated. Labour may retain this seat thanks to the party’s formidable get-out-the-vote machine, and perhaps many Muslim voters will grumpily tick the Labour box on election day despite their profound disillusionment. But the emotional bond between several other committed constituencies of Labour’s shrinking voting coalition frayed over time until it snapped. Many Muslims, like many young people, who felt listened to under Corbyn’s leadership now feel sidelined, only deemed of use as voting fodder. Whether in this byelection or next time around, they want to give Labour a kicking until they are listened to. That is, after all, how many diehard Scottish Labour voters felt: but when they crossed the electoral Rubicon, they never came back.