People are now asking, what will the Muslim vote do? The BES data show that — until now — at least 60 per cent of Muslims “would vote Labour if there were a general election tomorrow”. Given the substantial size of the Muslim population, should we recoin the phrase for the 21st-century Labour Party? As recently as the early 2000s, the Labour Party was the political party of choice for Roman Catholics — but very many of them in Britain were Irish and working-class. Our research suggests that the “Roman Catholic Labour vote” might have disappeared: no more RCs are likely to vote Labour than the population at large.
