LATIKA M BOURKE: Dumped British MP’s independent warning to Aussie voters: ‘They deliver jack s..t’

The upcoming Federal election will test whether the Gaza vote that influenced the UK and ES elections will be replicated in Australia.

Pro-Gaza candidates have declared they will run against Labor MPs in the three seats with the highest proportion of voters who say they are of Islamic faith — Blaxland and Watson in western Sydney and Calwell in Victoria.

Cabinet ministers Jason Clare and Tony Burke hold Blaxland and Watson respectively with margins of around 15 per cent but fear a UK-style outcome, whereby four safe sitting Labour members were ousted by Muslim voters, angered by the ongoing war in Gaza.

Nine months on, the most high-profile of those casualties, Jonathan Ashworth has opened up about his loss.

Despite belonging to Labour friends of Palestine, calling for ceasefires and condemning Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza strip, he lost his once-safe seat of Leicester South by 900 votes.

In 2019 he held the seat with a margin of 22,675 votes — nobody saw his loss coming.

But he says the Gaza MPs have delivered nothing.

“I’m now beginning to realise by the way that electing an Independent member of Parliament can deliver jack s..t for them,” he said.

“These independent Gaza MPs have been reduced to whining about the fact that they don’t have places on the powerful House of Commons select committee.

“Well yeah McFly, I mean, that’s what happens when you elect independent MPs, they’re impotent, they can’t deliver anything.

“Is this going to be an issue in the Australian election?

“It won’t really achieve anything there, I suspect.”

But he said progressive parties of the Left had to acknowledge the understandable anger over Gaza and explain their attempts to bring about a two-state solution.

He attended last year’s Democratic National Convention and warned the Democrats about the strength of the Gaza vote.

The Democrats bled votes in the key state of Michigan from traditional supporters over Gaza.

“I warned them actually, funnily enough, that this would happen,” Mr Ashworth said, speaking on the Latika Takes podcast.

“I remember meeting people from Michigan and saying, by the way, I’m supposed to be a Labour cabinet minister.

“And the reason I’m not, the reason I’ve got time to be here, is because I lost on this, you’ve got to watch it.

“And they didn’t believe me because they thought that people would come out to vote against Trump and actually I was saying no.

“People in the Labour world thought that voters would want to get rid of the Tory government.

“Now, on this issue, they wanted to send a clear and unequivocal message to their leadership.”

Zaid Basyouny who is running in Watson against Tony Burke said Mr Ashworth was missing the point.

“He’s a privileged Englishman thinking about a policy change overnight,” he said in an interview with The Nightly.

“But we are thinking long-term, this is not a single-term project.

“Within the next three to six years we will have more successful attempts and reduce margins in once-held safe seats.”

He said that Gaza independents could “flip the Australian political landscape” by clinching just one or two seats and contributing to a hung parliament outcome.

“In Australia, we could have five independents winning, this would flip the Australian political landscape, even flipping two seats would do a big thing — I can’t see either side winning majority.”

On whether the UK independents had achieved changing UK government policy, he said:

“They’ve achieved exactly the same jackshit Labour MPs inside the party achieved.”

And he said left-leaning voters who supported Trump over Kamala Harris had been vindicated as Trump had brokered the ceasefire before even coming into office.

“Trump stopped the genocide before he came into office,” he said.

“I could not sincerely sanction or be uncomfortable with the decision of the American Muslims who decided not to support Kamala Harris.”

But he added that he believed both Trump and Biden were supporting the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The second Trump Administration brokered a fragile ceasefire which has seen Hamas release more hostages in return for the release of Palestinians and suspected Hamas fighters. But negotiations have broken down over the second phase which was aimed at permanently ending the war.

But President Donald Trump has threatened “hell to pay” for Hamas if they do not release the hostages and spoken of commercialising Gaza into “the Riveria of the Middle East.”

Gaza has caused major internal difficulties for Labor.

West Australian Senator Fatima Payman was one lauded as the darling of the party and held up as a symbol of Labor’s success at diversification.

But she sensationally quit Labor after siding with the Greens on a motion on Palestine and has since formed a breakaway party.

She retains her Senate spot for six years meaning she will not face the polls this election due in May.