How Andy Burnham can win back the Muslim voters Labour has lost

Labour MPs have enthusiastically rallied around Andy Burnham, who is now set to become prime minister without a leadership contest in a few weeks' time.

The key reason for this is that they hope he will be able to win back voters Labour has lost both to parties on the right and the left.

For most of his premiership, Keir Starmer's strategy, shaped by his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, was to focus on courting those who might otherwise vote for Reform or the Conservatives.

The logic here was that others, including traditional left-wing voters and British Muslims, simply had nowhere else to go and were not at risk.

This royally backfired with a mass exodus of traditional Labour voters, and the meteoric rise of the Green Party over the past year.

The idea that Reform posed the ultimate threat to Labour, once almost an orthodoxy, was shattered last month in the local elections which triggered Starmer's fall: Labour lost more votes to the Greens than to Reform.

Many British Muslims, previously broadly loyal to Labour, have switched their support to the Greens or to independent candidates.

In 2019 Muslim support for Labour was more than 80 percent, making it an effective bloc vote, but that has since plummeted.

'If Andy Burnham wants to win back the trust of voters, he needs a clear break with the legacy of Keir Starmer'

- Abubakr Nanabawa, The Muslim Vote

The bloc vote has been destroyed: a study last month found that only 33 percent of Muslims in areas with high Muslim population density said they would vote Labour.

This presents an enormous challenge to the party, since some of its most important figures - including current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and former Health Secretary Wes Streeting - only narrowly held their seats in the face of challenges from independents in the 2024 general election.

That was on top of four Labour MPs - including Leicester South's Jonathan Ashworth, who had been expected to become a cabinet minister - losing their seats to independents.

So how can the prime minister-in-waiting win back Muslim voters?

The priorities of Muslim voters

Statistics suggest the popular narrative that Britain's Muslims are "sectarian" in voting choices and have radically different priorities from other voters is false.

In reality, Muslims appear to have similar priorities to other traditional left-wing Labour voters who have abandoned the party.

Muslim voters rated the cost of living as the biggest factor determining their vote in the local elections, with opposition to British foreign policy on Israel and Gaza another key issue. 

'We have seen a historic relationship between British Muslims and the Labour Party driven well past the point of crisis'

- Samayya Afzal, Labour Muslim Network

Muslim voters are not outliers in this respect.

A study last month revealed that over half of former Labour voters who intend to vote for a centre or left-wing party in the next general election cited Israel's genocide in Gaza as a factor in their decision.

There is good reason to believe Burnham is aware that Labour needs to win back its former voters among British Muslims.

Ali Milani, the chair of the Labour Muslim Network (LMN), is understood to have been close to Burnham for years and organised promotional videos during his successful campaign to become MP in Makerfield this month.

Milani has previously advised Labour on Muslim issues and warned in early 2024 that the party's relationship with Muslim voters would suffer over the leadership's staunch support for Israel's actions in Gaza.

He himself stayed in the party, although he strongly criticised Keir Starmer's leadership.

LMN is not formally affiliated to Labour but is well-known among Muslims in the party. Its events are well-attended by MPs and Deputy Leader Lucy Powell spoke at LMN's annual iftar event in February this year. 

But discussions with the leadership itself are thought to have been more difficult during the Starmer years.

A 2025 poll by LMN found that 82 percent of Britain's Muslim Labour MPs, councillors and mayors believed Starmer had handled Israel's war on Gaza "badly".

The poll further revealed that two-thirds did not believe Muslim representatives were treated equally to others in the Labour party.

Most of them - 64 percent - said Labour operated a "hierarchy of racism".

Milani rose to national prominence when he stood as the Labour candidate against Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 general election. 

He received 37.6 percent of the vote, while Johnson won with 52.6 percent. Since then Milani has regularly appeared as a political commentator on British television and radio.

Last week it was reported that Burnham had asked James Purnell, a former minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the 2000s who was once chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group, to be his chief of staff.

Will Burnham now pursue a broad-church approach to governing and appoint Milani, a figure with significant credibility among Muslims and the Labour left, to his team?

'An opportunity to reset'

Speaking to Middle East Eye this week, LMN's vice chair Samayya Afzal was frank about the scale of the challenge Burnham faces in restoring the relationship between Muslim voters and Labour.

"The Labour Party has lost the trust of Muslim communities and voters," Afzal said.

"From the scale of Islamophobia within our own party and its prevalence in wider society, to our approach to the genocide in Gaza, we have seen a historic relationship between British Muslims and the Labour Party driven well past the point of crisis," she added.

But Afzal argued that "Andy Burnham’s leadership presents an opportunity to reset and rebuild trust.

"With a real commitment to truly engage with the breadth of our Muslim communities, ending the factional and unfair treatment of Muslim representatives, and taking seriously the concerns around the genocide in Gaza, Sudan and ongoing situation in Kashmir, we may be able to begin to rebuild relationships with Muslim voters."

'We may be able to begin to rebuild relationships with Muslim voters'

 - Samayya Afzal, Labour Muslim Network vice chair

Other Muslim organisations said both domestic and foreign policy need to change if Labour wishes to win back the Muslim voters it has lost.

Mustafa al-Dabbagh, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "British Muslims are equal partners in the national project and the government needs to speak to them, not at them through government-appointed or self-appointed gatekeepers."

He added: "Any incoming prime minister must also reckon honestly with the deep anger felt over the genocide in Gaza and our government's response to it.

"They must not only fix our broken public services, ensure a better NHS and education, and tackle this cost-of-living crisis, but bring people and communities together."

Then there is The Muslim Vote (TMV), a campaign launched in December 2023 which backed challenges to Labour in the 2024 general election.

Most of TMV’s presence appears to be online, and it has drawn significant media attention.

Abubakr Nanabawa, a spokesperson for TMV, told MEE: "If Andy Burnham wants to win back the trust of voters, he needs a clear break with the legacy of Keir Starmer.

"In the short term that means a complete arms embargo on Israel and sanctions on all trade with the West Bank.

"He also needs to put ordinary Britons first and that means delivering a bold economic agenda that deals with the cost-of-living crisis.

"The strategy is simple: stop supporting genocide and make life affordable for everyone."

Who will be Burnham's foreign secretary?

Asked last week about whether Burnham should change course on foreign policy, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that "we are going to have to do more on Israel-Palestine, and we are going to have to take stronger action".

This hinted at something multiple Whitehall sources told MEE earlier this year: the Foreign Office wanted to take stronger measures against Israel, but Downing Street was the obstacle.

Privately, MEE understands, Foreign Office ministers have accepted that a ban on settlement goods would be consistent with the British position on the occupied territories.

It is still unknown who Burnham will appoint as foreign secretary. Some within Labour believe Cooper could be kept in position, but others point to former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who for a while was expected to contest the leadership but recently agreed not to.

He is now predicted to land a senior role in the Burnham government. If Streeting is not made chancellor he could become foreign secretary, in which case he would almost certainly seek to win back voters disaffected over Gaza.

Leaked messages Streeting sent last September to Peter Mandelson, then-ambassador to the US, revealed that he was terrified he would be "toast" at the next election in his own constituency of Ilford North.

In the 2024 general election, he only narrowly retained his Ilford North seat, with British Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohammed coming within 600 votes of unseating him.

A Labour source who knows Streeting said that as health secretary and a member of the cabinet, he privately pushed Starmer to take a stronger position against Israel's actions in Gaza.

And earlier this month Streeting publicly accused Starmer of having ignored evidence of Israeli war crimes. This makes him highly likely to move foreign policy significantly.

'If Andy Burnham wants to win back the trust of voters, he needs a clear break with the legacy of Keir Starmer'

- Abubakr Nanabawa, The Muslim Vote

Even acknowledging Israel has committed war crimes, which Britain has not done so far, would be a shift in policy. 

But there are other MPs who are also highly qualified for the role, and who have a strong record of pushing the Starmer government to go further.

Chief among them is the chair of parliament's foreign affairs select committee, which has scrutinised foreign policy: Emily Thornberry.

Thornberry has emerged as a leading voice within the Labour Party urging the government to take stronger action, particularly on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. 

She has significant credibility among her fellow backbenchers, many of whom back stronger measures, and she was shadow foreign secretary from 2016 until 2020, under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Who Burnham could appoint to his government

Elsewhere in government, Burnham might consider giving a ministerial position to rising Labour star Abtisam Mohamed, who was elected for Sheffield Central in 2024.

Mohamed, Britain's first Yemeni-origin MP, is popular among Labour MPs and has built up significant credibility on a range of issues including foreign policy.

She sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee and has secured a parliamentary debate on settlement goods on 7 July, which is expected to be well attended.

Burnham could also give ministerial positions to some of the eight MPs who resigned their shadow ministerial roles in late 2023 to defy Starmer by voting for a ceasefire in Gaza in parliament.

These include Naz Shah, Sarah Owen and Andy Slaughter.

Peter Oborne, associate editor at Middle East Eye, argues that after years of failed policies at home and abroad, the UK needs a different kind of prime minister.

Oborne says that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer attempted to emulate former Prime Minister Tony Blair by turning… pic.twitter.com/5DhVSkZdA2

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) June 23, 2026

Shah is particularly well-known among British Muslims. She survived a major independent challenge in the 2024 general election to be re-elected in Bradford West, and gave the loyal address to parliament after the king's speech last month.

Slaughter was shadow solicitor general before his resignation, while Owen co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims.

Meanwhile Richard Burgon, who was a shadow cabinet minister under Corbyn's leadership, is a highly popular backbencher on the Labour left who has been particularly active in parliament in putting pressure on the Starmer government over its foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as key domestic left-wing issues. 

Continuity or change?

There have been some reports in the British media that Burnham might not wish to make significant changes on foreign policy.

But Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), told MEE last week that the next prime minister "will need to make a really significant course correction on Middle East foreign policy".

Burnham is a longtime supporter of Caabu and visited the occupied West Bank in 2012 with the group.

"I've always been grateful to Caabu for facilitating a visit I made in 2012 with Labour Friends of Palestine to the West Bank," Burnham said in March this year.

Caabu and the British Palestine Project have unveiled five "policy pledges on Palestine" that they call on the next Labour leader to adopt.

The pledges include "ban all UK trade with illegal Israeli settlement good and services", "enforce international law", enforce "unrestricted access for UN agencies and humanitarian organisations", open occupied Palestine "to journalists, politicians and investigators" and "act with allies to end unlawful regional occupations". 

Doyle told MEE the next prime minister will need to resist "pressure, not least from the Trump administration, and "not just cave in" to American demands.

In the parliamentary Labour Party, calls have been mounting fr0m backbenchers for a full ban on the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements.

Recent polling of Labour members showed that a staggering 87 percent support a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, with only six percent opposing it. 

Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the next prime minister "must do what Starmer would not to end these horrors: stop providing arms to Israel, stop trading with illegal settlements in the West Bank, guarantee unrestricted humanitarian access, and ensure that those responsible for crimes against humanity are held fully accountable."

'We cannot deny that Gaza is a major reason many have walked'

 - Kim Johnson, Labour MP

Labour MP Kim Johnson told MEE: "If Andy wants to win back traditional Labour voters, especially those who feel abandoned on foreign policy, he has to show the moral clarity [Starmer] has too often lacked on Gaza."

Johnson explained: "He needs to be prepared to say clearly what Starmer would not: that a genocide is ongoing and that Labour’s refusal to speak honestly and act decisively about it has come at a huge political cost."

She argued that "people wanted Labour to call it what it is, to stand up for international law and to listen to the Palestine solidarity movement.

"Instead," she said, "that silence has alienated core voters and driven support away from the party.

"Take the May local elections for example - Palestine was on the ballot for millions of progressive voters. We lost 58 percent of the seats we were defending in England and lost almost four times as many voters to the Greens than to Reform UK.

"We cannot deny that Gaza is a major reason many have walked."

"Foreign policy," Johnson emphasised, "isn’t a side issue. It’s about values, credibility and whose side you are on when it matters."

If Burnham wants to make British foreign policy more in tune with the views of the Labour membership and many of the party's traditional supporters, perhaps he will look to bring Johnson - and MPs like her - into his government.