Galloway, Yakoob and the ‘independents’

 

Above: reactionary spivs Galloway and Yakoob

By Satya Pine

Akhmed Yakoob, who got 20% of the vote across Birmingham as an “independent” in the West Midlands mayoral election, says he will stand against Shabana Mahmood in the Birmingham Ladywood constituency in the general election.

Yakoob came third overall in the mayoral poll, with 12%. Analysis published in the Birmingham Dispatch suggests he won four out of ten constituencies in Birmingham.

Yakoob, unlike Jamie Driscoll, who ran as an independent in the North East mayor election but isn’t standing for parliament, had not even the most perfunctory left wing credentials, let alone a group of Labour defectors or a democratic campaign around him.

His main political plank was a commitment “for Gaza”, and that seems to be the main thing that drove his good polling.

But even his views on Gaza are unclear. He is “for Gaza”, but doesn’t say much about a ceasefire. (Labour is for “two states” and now, too late, too apologetically, for a ceasefire, and for pausing military exports to Israel). Yakoob says it is a slur to describe him as pro-Hamas, but hasn’t condemned 7 October or called for anything positive more specific than “freeing Palestine”.

Yakoob is a maverick — a lawyer whose primary popularity is from TikTok, who finds himself in the lower circles of the Manosphere, going on podcasts to joke about physically assaulting his wife if she does OnlyFans, and how much he supports Andrew Tate.

After the election, he put up a video with the name and workplace of a local schoolteacher — editing a doorbell cam video to make it seem (entirely falsely) that she’d used a racial slur whilst she was out door-knocking for Labour for the first time. She is now receiving death threats to her school and is experiencing serious distress as a result.

But Yakoob, and some of Birmingham’s left, are counting on his vote holding up. George Galloway’s Workers Party endorsed Yakoob’s mayoral bid, and looks like backing him for Ladywood. This is a mostly working class area with a strong Muslim community, located in the city centre and currently facing an unpopular “regeneration” plan being pushed by the Labour city council. All of that could make fertile ground for lightning to strike twice.

More independents are trying to get in on this, too. Preliminary talks for a new coalition in Birmingham took place on the weekend of the 11-12 May. This initiative is called Reliance. It presents itself as equidistant from all parties, but involves a mix of ex-Labour people and other campaigners, and has at least one other local candidate, Birmingham University’s Professor Kamel Hawwash, ex-Labour and former chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Hawwash is standing against Steve McCabe (or whoever replaces him for Labour if he stands down) in Selly Oak.

Mohammed Akunjee (Shamima Begum’s lawyer) and Leanne Mohammed are part of the same loose network and have declared their intentions to run in the London constituencies of Bethnal Green and Bow, and Ilford North. Ex-Labour lefts Pam Fitzpatrick, Sam Gorst, and Emma Dent Coad are standing as “independents” in Harrow West, Garston and Halewood, and Kensington respectively. Further meetings are planned in London (with Andrew Feinstein, standing as an independent in Holborn and St Pancras, and Roger Hallam), Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Bristol. They promise a “new model of democracy”, “people’s assemblies” and that “your voice will be heard”.

We shall see. More or less the defining characteristic of an “independent” candidate is that they are accountable only to themselves, and not to any party organisation, however poor and bureaucratised.

In the West Midlands mayoral election, Tory Andy Street was bolstered by a few factors, his incumbent status, being relatively popular personally, and distancing himself from the government somewhat on issues like HS2 cancellation. He lost narrowly, though with Yakoob’s intervention Labour experienced a 1.8% swing against it, and the right-wing vote didn’t see a dramatic collapse when you factor in Reform UK.

Turnout was surprisingly good, especially once word got out that the result was going to be so close. Unlike previous mayoral elections, this used First Past the Post, and not a runoff system.

Alum Rock Friends of Palestine set up its own no-contest agreement meeting of “pro-Palestine candidates” on Wednesday 22 May — asking for delegates from “groups such as TUSC/Socialist Party, Workers Party, Reliance Party and supporters of Akhmed Yakoob”, with the endorsement of Stuart Richardson, chair of Birmingham Stop the War Coalition. More information on that if it comes, but this is clearly not a left wing move, given the inclusion of Galloway’s Workers Party and Yakoob.

These initiatives, along with the various others that have cropped up recently in opposition to Starmer’s leadership (No Ceasefire, No Vote; Collective; Transform; We Deserve Better, etc.) are devoid of a major trade union link. Some of the candidates, like Hawwash, Fitzpatrick, Gorst, and Dent Coad have a reasonable Labour-left background, and all of them project themselves, at least among themselves, as wooing a left-wing electorate, but many lack any real semblance of left — let alone socialist — politics, and there is certainly no collective left or socialist profile. Some of the highest-profile people, like Galloway and Yakoob, push ideas to the right of the Tories.

On some level the candidacies show an appetite for left-of-Labour electoral options, but they cannot really be ranked above the Green Party, which at least is a party and is broadly leftish.

Given the absence of any credible socialist electoral vehicle, we say the most productive move is “vote Labour, but fight for a workers’ government”.

• this article appears in the latest issue of Solidarity and on the Workers Liberty website