THE man who did more damage to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party on July 4 than the socialist left aggregated is sipping hot chocolate in a cafe in Gloucester and pulling no punches.

“They don’t care about the anti-war movement, Muslims, the left, the working class.”

Abubakr Nanabawa is referring to the Labour Party. He is the director of Muslim Vote, the organisation which helped elect four independent MPs at the general election and powered the mass abandonment of Labour by Muslims on polling day.

He is not a boastful man at all, but he does point out that Muslim Vote, barely six months old, has achieved a level of parliamentary representation that has taken the Green Party around 30 years to attain.

Muslim Vote is now at the centre of a welter of allegations — often coming from Labour MPs it unseated — of sectarianism and various other abuses.

The 24-year-old appears entirely unfazed when the Star meets him in his hometown. He believes that Muslim Vote’s achievement has a resonance far beyond the British Muslim community itself.

“We are a genuine alternative to the status quo. We would become as strong as the Liberal Democrats. We could easily win 30-50 seats next time,” he says.

Muslim Vote’s methods are straightforward. Consulting with local communities, with a special focus on the 100-odd constituencies where Muslims constitute more than 10 per cent of the electorate, and above all the 23 where they are more than 30 per cent, it made a recommendation as to which candidate should be supported in the election.

The Muslim Vote is itself a coalition of organisations, including the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Engagement and Development, which gave weight to its recommendations.

Its criteria for support covered a range of left demands, but the litmus test was, of course, the genocide in Gaza. It was the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinians and, above all, Starmer’s response to it, which called Muslim Vote into being.

Abubakr explains that there was first the radio interview in which the Labour leader asserted Israel’s right to deny the Palestinians food, water and power, and then the Commons vote on a ceasefire, which Starmer whipped Labour MPs to oppose.

To add to that, there was the comment by a Labour executive member that the loss of those concerned about the issue was a matter of “shaking off the fleas.”

“We started organising — to oppose genocide,” Abubakr says. “Seventy per cent of the people supported a ceasefire in Gaza.”

But Muslim Vote also reflected other concerns. “We are also very clear about opposing austerity. We wanted to protest [about] the state of the NHS, we want investment in it and in education.” Deepening poverty connected to the cost-of-living crisis was also on their agenda.

On all of these matters, he believed Labour was letting down its longest-standing supporters. But Gaza was key to the mass defection of Muslim voters from the party.

Echoing the “no ceasefire, no vote” slogan, which emerged early on from the vast solidarity movement with Gaza, Muslim Vote “agreed we would not support any MP who did not support a ceasefire.”

Initially, Muslim Vote intended to recommend a vote for a dozen sitting Labour MPs, all stalwart supporters of the Palestinians, including Muslim women Zarah Sultana and Apsana Begum.

However, “There was a lot of blowback from other groups, saying that we should not support any part of the Labour Party,” Abubakr said.

“The treatment of Faiza Shaheen was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he says, referring to Starmer’s sudden axing of the charismatic Muslim woman as Labour’s candidate in Chingford on the eve of the election.

“That tipped us into being anti-Labour, in terms of giving any support to Labour candidates,” he explained.

However, Muslim Vote did not oppose Sultana and Begum but shifted to neutral, confident that they would win anyway.

“It’s not going to be a permanent strategy, but for many this time emotions were running very high,” Abubakr says without over-statement.

The Islamophobia which has flourished unchecked in Starmer’s Labour, has now been presented with its electoral bill.

“The Labour Party totally misread the power of the Muslim community.” Previous generations of migrants often gave Labour instinctive support. For Abubakr, third-generation British, those days are over.

“I said to my father, ‘You don’t owe the Labour Party anything.’ You can make that argument now.”

The damage will not easily be repaired, but Abubakr keeps an open mind.

“We will look at the five-year record,” he says and is positive about rail renationalisation, the settlement of industrial disputes and by Starmer’s pick as Attorney-General, Richard Hermer.

But he is not overly optimistic. “They only banned 10 per cent of arms sales to Israel. And they are clearly returning to the austerity of the 2010s.

“No ordinary person can put up with that. Two child benefit cap, winter fuel — it boggles the mind.”

These are far from Muslim-only concerns. It situates its efforts in a general class context.

“In the most deprived areas, Labour lost 7 per cent of the vote, and that from 2019. Some went to the independents, or the Green Party, or Reform UK. Labour is not speaking to the communities it is meant to represent.

“Now they have suspended people who voted for the two-child benefit cap. It’s worse than Blair, who allowed rebellions. There is no dissent allowed,” he points out.

“Our demands are in line with what ordinary people need in this country. We want Muslim Voice to be a campaign group that makes Britain a just place for all.”

He warms to his theme: “You say you support British weapons being used to blow the smithereens out of children. The people of this country do not support that, but most MPs do.

“Supporting a genocide at the behest of the US State Department, that is not in Britain’s interests.

“There is a fundamental lack of independence and sovereignty, which is what Brexit was supposed to be all about.

“And what’s happening to the NHS, austerity, that is not in the interests of Britain. Those who opposed that are the voice of the majority of Britain.”

Beyond the obvious broad nature of its concerns, Muslim Vote can address the sectarian, communalist, charge convincingly. Around two-thirds of the candidates it backed were not themselves Muslim.

Abubakr himself took some abuse from elements within the Muslim community for calling for support for Andrew Feinstein in Starmer’s Camden constituency and Michael Lavalette in Preston, two left candidates who were challenged by Muslims locally.

His call was the right one — Feinstein and Lavalette both polled very strongly, with the former contributing to a cut in Starmer’s personal vote by an extraordinary 50 per cent.

“Muslim Vote set a tone, a movement for people to get behind,” he says but stresses that success depended on the quality of the candidates who stood as independents.

“They were good local candidates, extremely popular in their communities,” he says, citing Leicester South’s new MP Shockat Adam, who drew deep support from the local Sikh community, as an example.

But his final response to the sectarian charge is robust. “Ever since the ‘war on terror,’ the portrayal of Muslims in the media, in popular culture, in day-to-day life is appalling. Legislation on counter-terrorism, and Prevent, anti-BDS laws are all mainly directed at Muslims.

“Islamophobia is rife in the media, there is a passive voice as Palestinians are murdered in cold blood. So how do you say that a community treated like that should not organise? It is baffling.

“If you have common interests and values, you oppose parties that oppose them,” he points out, reasonably enough.

The far-right riots of the summer, in significant part directed against Muslims, add weight to Muslim Vote’s case.

“Islamophobia is presented like it’s a bottom-up, grassroots movement.” But the Establishment “contributed to the riots by demonising Muslims” over decades “in order to justify the bombing of Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

“They have bombed innocent Muslims all over the world, and they have to demonise Muslims in order to justify that.

Now, “people are deeply scared. We need some self-reflection from the leaders of this country,” he adds optimistically.

So, what of the future and the clamour for a new party on the left? “Muslim Vote is going to continue to be independent of all parties,” Abubakr says.

“There should be an alternative, yes, it would be better for democracy, opposed to the Labour-Tory duopoly” but that alternative “must be grassroots-led, community-led, not telling communities what they want from the top.”

He advocates learning from the New Popular Front in France, which has united socialists with Greens. Abubakr brings to his project a deep and nuanced understanding of the electoral situation on the ground in communities across the country.

“The Greens could win in Bristol. But Bradford is getting very hard for Labour. And while Leanne Mohamad nearly took Ilford North, the independent in Ilford South did really well” — and that was before the Labour victor Jas Athwal was revealed as a dodgy landlord.

Muslim Vote is part of a “grassroots, community-focused alternative to what the two main parties are for” which can only grow, he believes.

“Apathy is the biggest barrier. Labour got two in ten people” voting for it on July 4. “It has no popular support. They won because they are not the Tories, people were sick of corruption and stagnation, and Labour has come in and is offering more of the same.”

Muslim Vote is certainly a cause of the crisis more-of-the-same is now facing. Its success is another sign that the future of class politics will not necessarily travel the roads of the past.