Why UK Labour leader Starmer is reaching out to India

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Today, I took the opportunity to say thank you for India’s immense contribution to Britain. pic.twitter.com/n6O4fnzISO

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 26, 2023

British Indians are the largest minority ethnic group in the UK and have been traditionally considered supporters of the left-of-centre Labour Party. Of late, with successive wins at the General Elections for the ruling Conservative Party and its prominent Indian-origin faces being appointed at important public positions, there has been an attempt from Labour to regain lost ground.

The Indian-origin community in the UK

According to the 2011 census of England and Wales, there were 1.4 million people of Indian origin residing in the UK, accounting for 2.5 percent of the overall population.

As a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study noted in 2021, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the UK in 2015, it was “A time when the British Indian community was growing in stature and showing signs of political evolution. Historically, survey data have suggested that British Indians—like most other ethnic minorities—have been staunch supporters of the left-of-center Labour Party.”

It cites a 2010 survey of ethnic minority voters in the United Kingdom, where 68 per cent of them favoured the Labour Party. Among other reasons, it can be attributed to the Conservatives’ opposition towards immigration and liberalising cultural norms.

Change in position

The Carnegie study said that in recent years, “extant survey data, as well as anecdotal evidence, have indicated that the community’s political leanings are shifting,” particularly the British Hindus.

Devesh Kapur, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Caroline Duckworth and Milan Vaishnav, at the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discussed this in a 2021 The Guardian article.

While noting the erosion of Labour support from Indian and Indian-origin voters in favour of the Conservatives, it added that Labour was still the choice for a majority (54 per cent) of those surveyed. However, this is a fall from previous years and many voters said they were undecided in their preference. They could then play a key role in influencing closely contested electoral seats’ results.

There are also variations across age and religion, with younger voters being more supportive of Labour. “A majority of Muslim and Sikh respondents would vote Labour in a snap election, but among Christians and Hindus the Conservatives would be the most popular party. Given Hindus’ relative demographic weight, Labour’s problem with British Indians is largely driven by the flight of Hindu voters from its ranks,” the article said.

Labour and the Hindu votes

A few factors are notable here. Firstly, the support for Labour has not been high overall among the British population, with continuous electoral losses since 2010 in the general elections. In 2019, Labour won 202 seats of the 650 in the House of Commons – their lowest number since 1935.

Second, the Conservative Party has fielded candidates of Indian origin quite visibly, with Rishi Sunak’s elevation as the Prime Minister marking the ultimate high in political representation for the community.

Also, as Rakib Ehsan, a Doctoral Researcher in Political Science at the Royal Holloway University of London, noted in a 2017 article in The Conversation, Indians have come to represent high-earning, highly educated classes, and their interests no longer align as much with the pro-welfare planks espoused by Labour Party and leaders such as former Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn.

Further, perhaps the Hindu vote among British Indians has been influenced by certain political positions of the Labour Party on India’s domestic matters. In August 2019, under Corbyn, Labour passed a motion after the abrogation of Article 370 – which had until then granted a special status to the erstwhile Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. “The motion said there was a humanitarian crisis in the disputed territory and that the people of Kashmir should be given the right of self-determination. It also called for international monitors to be allowed into the region,” The Guardian reported.

Starmer, however, has stressed the outreach in his term so far. After he assumed the top post in the party in 2020, he said, “Kashmir is a bilateral issue for India and Pakistan to resolve peacefully.”

During a special India-focused event on the sidelines of the party’s annual conference in 2022, Starmer formally relaunched the Labour Convention of Indian Organisations (LCIO). “The timing is poignant as people across the world celebrate 75 years of Indian independence,” Starmer said.