Newspaper Reader.
May 10, 2026
Headline: We’re entering a sectarian age — playing to extremes wins votes
Sub-headline: A Green Party activist who responded to a solemn post commemorating the victims of the October 7 attacks with a laughter emoji has just been elected.
Editor: I provide a sampler of Mr. Colevile’ s retorical posturing:
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But one of the biggest stories of the local elections this year — and certainly the most depressing — has been the rise not of MPs but councillors for Gaza. The Henry Jackson Society think tank, which rebranded itself “Sectarian Watch” for the vote count, has been following 171 “Muslim sectarian” council candidates: that is, candidates for whom issues such as Palestine or Kashmir are not a feature of campaigning but the entire core of it.
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And of course, there has been a reaction. The Jewish parts of north London are now monolithically Conservative: in Golders Green, site of the latest antisemitic atrocity, the leading Tory candidate received an extraordinary 69 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, Rupert Lowe of Restore — the party for those who think Nigel Farage is frankly a bit wet on the whole Muslim thing — has led its local offshoot, Great Yarmouth First, to a crushing win in East Anglia, although to be fair its campaign focused rather more on seeing off the threat of rule from Norwich than the need to re-Christianise the streets.
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As George Galloway repeatedly proved during his parliamentary career, candidates who get elected on an anti-Israel ticket rarely place a high priority on sorting out the bin collections, or dealing with constituents’ other concerns. Indeed, their incentive is to cater even more narrowly than usual to a particular slice of the electorate, even though there are plenty of constituents of other faiths, skin colours and backgrounds who find themselves locked out of local politics.
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And of course this cycle feeds on itself. The more voters defect to the Greens and Muslim independents, the more pressure Labour will be under to pander to the Gaza vote to win them back. And social media definitely doesn’t help, by privileging those with the most extreme views.
Just look at the career of Mothin Ali. When he made that speech, the Green Party promised a full investigation. It must have gone well. Within 16 months he’d won the ballot to be deputy leader.
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Editor: That the pressing question of the ‘October 7 attacks’ against the Zionist Faschist State were the product of a protrated genocidal attack, on the whole of Gaza, aided and abettoed by American money and materiel. Place the self-serving denuded political chatter of Mr. Colevile’s ascription, of the irrelevance of local elections, to the concerns of citizens and their extended families demonstartes an inexcusable myopia!
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