Streeting slams ‘attempts to delegitimise’ Muslim voters over byelection loss
Health secretary’s comments follow Reform-led backlash against Green victory in Gorton and Denton, but also put him at odds with Keir Starmer
Health secretary Wes Streeting has criticised attempts to “delegitimise” Muslim voters following the Gorton and Denton byelection.
Speaking at Tuesday’s Big Iftar, an annual event in parliament marking Ramadan, Streeting said: “We’ve even seen, in recent days — as Muslims have upheld British values, gone to the ballot box and cast their votes, taking part in democracy — attempts to delegitimise them, to suggest that their votes and their voices count less than others.”
He singled out Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, criticising Farage’s unevidenced claim to have won the most votes among British-born voters. Farage has written to the Electoral Commission claiming that there were “many cases” of “family voting” in “predominantly Muslim areas” in the byelection, despite the party’s chair David Bull having conceded that it is unlikely that any such cases would have affected the result.
But Streeting’s comments also distance him from senior figures in the Labour Party, including prime minister Keir Starmer, who wrote to MPs last week accusing the Green Party of pursuing “sectarian politics”, while Labour’s chair Anna Turley said the allegations of family voting were “extremely worrying and concerning”.
Streeting, by contrast, congratulated the new Green MP Hannah Spencer — who was also in attendance at the Big Iftar event — on her victory.
He went on to say it was important that “people who look like me defend the right, the voice, the space of Muslims in our country to participate in our democracy on equal terms, with equal votes, and equal voices and just as much right as anyone else to choose who represents people in this country”.
Thursday’s poll propelled the Green Party to its first ever parliamentary byelection victory. The seat of Gorton and Denton is nearly 30% Muslim and had returned a five-figure majority for the previous MP, Labour’s Andrew Gwynne, in 2024.
The health secretary drew a comparison between present-day rising Islamophobia and 1930s Germany in which bystanders “looked the other way, even as a smell of rotting human flesh emanated from the death camps under the noses of people living in towns and villages nearby”.
“People in our country today are choosing to look the other way as Muslims are discriminated against on the streets of our city or even at the heart of our democracy,” he said.
Several Labour figures, including deputy leader Lucy Powell and London mayor Sadiq Khan, have criticised Labour’s campaign and response to the result, with the latter accusing the Labour leadership of trying to compete with Reform while remaining silent on Gaza and diversity.
