Labour’s love lost

Rohit Mahajan

He who is not a socialist at 19, has no heart. He who is still a socialist at 30 has no brain.

— Otto von Bismarck

Why are Indians in Britain, gradually but perceptibly, moving away from the Labour Party? Suresh K, who holds a very senior position in pharmaceutical company in England, has an answer that’s breathtakingly simple: “Now we’ve got the money.”

Suresh explains that the Conservative Party provides a more conducive environment for business — for instance, the Labour Party manifesto for last month’s election had promoted renationalising some rail, energy and utility companies. Big business isn’t keen about such proposals.

Suresh adds that as more and more Indians get into the high-income categories, they become less keen about the high taxation that Labour Party advocates for the richest in Britain. “For the recent elections, the Labour Party had proposed a new tax for the top 5 per cent earners in the UK,” says Suresh. “They proposed that anyone earning over £80,000 yearly would be taxed at 45 per cent, and those earning over £123,000 would be taxed at 50 per cent.”

Suresh suggests that human nature being what it is, when the immigrants from India were earning incomes that attracted lesser tax, they were keen about the Labour Party; but when they got into the higher tax brackets, they moved away from Labour.

Diminishing votes

In the 2015 election in the UK, for the first time ever, the Conservative Party got an estimated 1 million ethnic minority votes. Labour still got the largest share of the ethnic minority votes, an estimated 1.6 million. But Labour’s vote base was getting eroded due to a shift to the Conservatives, for most of these new Conservative voters had crossed over from Labour. The same research threw up some other revealing numbers — 49 per cent British Hindus and Sikhs were Conservative voters and 41 per cent Labour voters in 2015, while Muslims were 64 per cent Labour and 25 per cent Conservative. 

Hindus and Sikhs from India are among the most successful ethnic groups in the UK, and these numbers support the theory of a great seismic shift caused by prosperity. Affluence has abruptly loosened the grip of Labour on the heartstrings of the immigrants from India, and shepherded them into the embrace of the Conservatives. 

V Dhruv is a first-generation migrant, though he didn’t have a choice in the matter — he was a child when his parents moved from Mumbai to the UK around 15 years ago. An excellent student, he sailed through university and now works with a major bank. He is Conservative to the core, though he accepts that immigrants such as his parents gained from the Labour’s struggle for the British “underclass” and the immigrants. “Immigrants were aided by the rights and social security benefits (housing, free medical care, etc) fought for by Left leaders and politicians,” he says. But he also contends that for unfettered economic growth and fulfilment of human potential, the Conservatives are better than Labour.

Brexit surprise

Last year, when Britain voted on exiting the European Union, there were a few surprises in store. The campaign for Exit was marked by xenophobia and bigotry, fuelled by the extreme conservatives, yet a large number of immigrants (Indians and others) voted for Brexit. For example, Leicester’s population is 30 per cent Asian, yet Remain won by a merely 2 per cent majority. Many Asian immigrants, who supported Brexit, cited immigration from Europe as a reason behind their decision. 

“Yes, immigration from countries such as Poland, Spain, Italy and Hungary is causing unemployment to rise,” says RS Virk, who migrated to the UK in the mid 1990s. 

Mohammed Zaheer, a Karachi-born British citizen who’s married to a Scandinavian woman, explains the antipathy for immigrants from the rest of Europe — it’s a fight for common resources. “It’s about the future of my children,” says Zaheer, who works for the National Health Service. “It’s reported that around 3.3 million immigrants from EU are living in the UK, and 2.1 million of them work here. If this continues, the future of my children will get tougher,” says Zaheer with a grin, but he’s not joking.

Misinformed

We asked Preet Kaur Gill, the Labour MP from Edgbaston in Birmingham, if she’s studied the phenomenon of the shift from Labour to Conservatives. 

“When I was campaigning, I came across these attitudes,” she says. “It’s almost like — ‘I’ve made it. I live in a nice house now, I’m wealthy, and now I must vote Conservative!’”

She says it’s just a “fad”, caused by, among other things, lack of thorough thinking. “Because when you ask them if they can name a policy in which the Conservatives support them, they have no answer,” says Gill. “But when you ask them who gave them the opportunities when they came to this country, they say yes, it was Labour.”

Tory setback 

Trends from the recent UK elections show that the shift away from Labour is evident and marked. But Gill is right, too — it’s true that the majority of Indian immigrants continue to support Labour. 

Rather surprisingly, in last month’s election, Labour’s vote share increased 9.5 per cent since 2015 — due to this, the lead of the Conservative vote over Labour vote is now only 2.4 per cent (42.4 per cent to 40 per cent).  

Has the movement of the Indian immigrants from Labour to Tories slowed down or arrested? Dr Altaf Hussain, a Conservative Party leader in Wales, with roots in India, thinks so. “Labour were able to rely on the British Indian loyalty over the years which we thought is changing, but the recent election has shown that Indian voters still continue to be Labour,” says Dr Hussain.

He notes that the British Parliament now has more Black and Minority Ethnic MPs than ever before. “There is 11.5 per cent increase in Labour vote share in the 75 most ethnically diverse seats, higher than the 9.5 per cent rise the Labour Party achieved nationally,” he adds.

Gill says there are many immigrants who, despite flourishing, will never leave Labour. “I’ve been to some very big houses, with a Rolls Royce outside, and they’re Labour families,” she says. “As for those who’re voting for the Tories, other than the tax breaks, if they’re very wealthy, there’s not a lot they can say Tories have done for them.”

It’s the young who caused the swing for Labour. Surveys showed that below-30s went for Labour in a big way — 66 per cent of 18-19 year-olds, 62 per cent of 20-24 year-olds, 63 per cent of 25-29 year-olds. Beyond that, the vote share shows a sharp skew towards the Tories and at the other end of the spectrum, 69 per cent of 70-plus voters voted Tory. A fine demonstration of Bismarck’s dictum: Youth thinking with their heart, older people with their brain. This dictum seems to work for settled, more prosperous communities as well — the move of Indian immigrants towards the Conservatives would suggest that.