In the first instance, the true radicalism of the UK’s Muslim electorate on Gaza is not perhaps fully appreciated by those who do not live in the country or pay close attention to its politics. Or at least, not by those who do not read the Babylon Bee.
The Under-Appreciated Radicalism of British Muslim Opinion
Consider these findings from a JL Partners and Number Cruncher poll which surveyed 1,000 British Muslims between 14 February and 12 March 2024, with a comparison sample of 2,013 members of the general public. The Muslim sample was weighted by age, sex, education, ethnicity, birthplace and region; the stated margin of error was approximately ±3.1 percentage points. It was commissioned by the right-leaning Henry Jackson Society, but the fieldwork itself was conducted by professional pollsters.
Its most striking findings were:
Forty-six per cent of British Muslims said they felt more sympathy for Hamas than for Israel, while only 3% chose Israel. Another 36% chose neither and 15% did not know. Among the wider public, 16% chose Hamas and 27% chose Israel.
Only about one quarter of British Muslims accepted that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on 7 October. British Muslims were more likely to report a positive than a negative view of Hamas; only 24% expressed a negative view. Some 26% named Israel–Palestine as their single most important election issue, compared with 3% of the wider public. And, of course, 48% of British Muslims told the pollster that they believed Jews had too much power over UK government policy, suggesting perhaps that the supposed difference between antisemitism and “anti-Zionism” is not as pronounced as some might have the public believe.
Burnham, of course, cannot hope to placate all of that sentiment. Pandering politician though he may be, he remains an unlikely candidate to start issuing pronouncements about the need to do something about the power of the Jews in Britain or to start saying that he prefers Hamas to Israel.
But it is the inability to placate that sentiment which makes his comments so politically unwise: by signaling in the broad direction of extreme sentiment on Israel and Palestine, he risks sending the message that the campaign of extremist rhetoric from the Greens and other groups is working and exerting a gravitational pull on the center of politics. By implicitly conceding his party’s need for the Muslim vote to retain power, he will embolden those within that community who wish to set the price for that vote ever higher.
As Burnham – to his limited credit – acknowledges in his video, Britain is already becoming something of a hostile and frightening place for the country’s small Jewish population, with violent antisemitic attacks on the rise and casual antisemitism on social media now essentially de rigueur.
But note that beyond rote condemnation, Burnham offers no antidote to the attitudes infecting a great swathe of his citizens. Rather than challenging the increasingly extreme views of British Muslims, Burnham’s instinct is to placate them. Or perhaps, to use a more apposite word, to appease them.
The Inversion of an Anti-Semitic Canard
One of the ironies here, of course, is that while almost half of British Muslims profess to believe that it is Jews exerting influence over British politics, the truth is that it is Muslim immigration that is increasingly shaping the tenor of British foreign policy: as Burnham’s video demonstrates, politicians are now acting on the world stage mindful of the reaction of a cohort of voters at home who demonstrate far more interest in the welfare of Palestine than they do in the interests of Britain.
This is the mirror image of antisemitic conspiracy theories: in the imagination of the antisemite, Western politicians are so beholden to Jewish interests that they put the Jewish state’s interests ahead of their own. No evidence has ever substantiated that claim. Yet, in modern Britain, we can see the influence of British Muslims and their naked desire to prioritize Palestine exerting overt influence on British politics and policy.
That, one might imagine, will have major consequences in the longer term.
