Source: The Guardian
As the Conservative party conducts its postmortem on the 2017 general election campaign, it will no doubt study the apparent surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn from young people. However, the party would do well to look deeper and recognise failures in other important areas.
In her shortlived campaign to be prime minister last year, Theresa May promised to lead “one nation … that works not for the privileged but for everyone”, a pitch that appealed to a large cross-section of the British public, not least thousands of Muslims and other minority groups who align closely to the core conservative values of family, meritocracy and aspiration, free enterprise, public duty and charity.
However the famous “nasty party” description of the party seems to have resonated far more at this election, with Muslim communities apparently turning away from the party in large numbers, according to analysis by the Muslim Council of Britain.
Muslim voters had the potential to affect the outcome of 33 swing seats in which the Conservative party was first or second – and in all bar one, there was a swing of well over 10% towards the Labour party (compared with a national swing of about 2%). Not only did the Tories fail to win even one of these seats held by Labour, they lost eight of the 12 marginals where they were the incumbent party.
Categories: Europe, Muslims, The Muslim Times, UK