As Andy Burnham eyes 10 Downing Street, he inherits a Labour Party that has lost the trust of Britain’s Muslims

MANCHESTER (MNTV) — Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor now widely tipped to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister, faces a problem that no amount of soft-left charisma can easily solve: the collapse of his party’s relationship with British Muslims, a constituency Labour once treated as a permanent fixture of its coalition.

Burnham returned to parliament in June after winning the Makerfield by-election, and following Starmer’s resignation, he has emerged as the frontrunner to take over both the party and the country. 

His record on Muslim and migration issues, drawn from more than a decade in and around frontline politics, is a study in contradictions — one that has left him claimed simultaneously as an ally by Jewish community leaders and viewed with suspicion by campaigners supporting Palestinian rights, while some Muslim community figures speak warmly of him and immigration charities accuse him of echoing the far right.

Scale of rupture

The context Burnham inherits is stark. Labour’s share of the Muslim vote fell to just over 60 per cent in the 2024 general election, down from around 80 per cent in 2019. 

In the 21 constituencies where Muslims make up more than 30 per cent of the population, Labour’s support collapsed by nearly 30 points, and five sitting Labour MPs were defeated by pro-Gaza independents. 

By April this year, polling put Labour’s support among Muslims at just 33 per cent, with three in five willing to back an independent to keep Labour out.

The rupture began with Gaza. Starmer’s early suggestion that Israel had the right to cut off water and power to the besieged territory was widely heard as an endorsement of collective punishment, and the disconnect deepened as the British government maintained much of its position even after the International Court of Justice found it plausible that Palestinians were being denied protection from genocide. 

That the community that once formed a bedrock of Labour support now has other political homes — the Greens, independents, and the newly formed Your Party — means the old assumption that disillusioned Muslim voters will eventually “come home” no longer holds.

Manchester record: genuine goodwill

Within Greater Manchester, Burnham has built real relationships across the region’s large Muslim communities, concentrated in towns such as Rochdale and Oldham. 

The president of Manchester Central Mosque, a self-described lifelong Labour supporter, told Hyphen, a local magazine, that he had nothing but praise for the mayor, singling out Burnham’s role in securing protective equipment for mosques providing burial services during the Covid pandemic — an early interaction in which he found Burnham eager to understand the problems facing not just Muslims but all Manchester communities.

Burnham has also been responsive to campaigns on migrant welfare, including writing letters in support of efforts to end the charging of migrants for NHS care and data-sharing between the health service and immigration enforcement. 

As shadow home secretary years earlier, he attacked the government’s Prevent counter-extremism strategy as “toxic” and likened it to internment — a stance that endeared him to Muslim advocates who saw the programme as casting an entire community under suspicion, even as it drew criticism from those who accused him of prioritising optics over confronting genuine problems.

Migration turn

Yet Burnham’s recent positioning has alarmed those same advocates. During his by-election campaign, he said net migration needed to fall further and expressed broad support for Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s “earned settlement” and asylum proposals — plans he had previously criticised for leaving people in limbo. 

He has spoken of making greater use of detention centres and reneged, campaigners say, on a prior commitment to ending the No Recourse to Public Funds policy.

The moment that crystallised the concern came on June 9, when Burnham told BBC Radio Manchester that he agreed with what Nigel Farage was saying on migration. 

That was the same day the far right was continuing anti-immigrant rioting in Belfast that left migrants, Muslims, and racialised people trapped in their homes under threat of firebombing. 

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants wrote to Burnham demanding he retract the statement, warning that such rhetoric from senior politicians fans the flames of and legitimises the far right.

Gaza: a late apology

On Gaza, Burnham has occupied deliberately ambiguous ground. He condemned the October 7 Hamas attacks unreservedly and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself within international law, but broke with Starmer relatively early by joining calls for a ceasefire — a move that drew friction from Zionist figures in Manchester, some of whom felt it came while captives were still held. 

He has consistently declined to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, instead calling for a full process of investigation and accountability, a caution that human rights campaigners have criticised.

In July, in a video interview with the Guardian, Burnham went further than before, acknowledging that Labour’s initial response to Gaza had caused huge hurt, saying the party got it wrong and that he was sorry. 

He promised to put pressure on the Israeli government, demand accountability for war crimes that he said appeared to have been committed, push for more aid, and ban all trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. 

Jewish community leaders in Manchester have praised his longstanding partnership with local organisations, his attendance at Holocaust Memorial events, and his record of calling out antisemitism within Labour, with one senior figure describing him as a great ally — while acknowledging genuine disagreements, particularly over his ceasefire call. 

The Muslim Vote, which monitors politicians’ positions on Palestine, has declined to take a position on Burnham, judging his stance too unclear to assess.

Test ahead

For those tracking Labour’s relationship with British Muslims, the question is whether Burnham represents a genuine departure or merely a more personable version of the same approach.

Commentators writing for outlets including Middle East Eye have argued that the trust Labour lost was destroyed by actions and can only be rebuilt by actions — not by mosque visits, iftar photographs, or expressions of concern. 

One early signal cited with concern was the reported selection of a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel as his chief of staff, a choice critics said would tell Muslim voters everything before Burnham had spoken a word.

Britain is home to around 3.9 million Muslims in England and Wales, concentrated heavily enough to decide the outcome in dozens of constituencies. 

Burnham may yet lead Labour back to a commanding position — but the evidence of the past two years suggests he will not do it by asking Muslim voters, as the party has so often done before, for one more act of faith. 

Having heard the promises and read the statements, that constituency now appears determined to judge Labour, and its likely next leader, by a single measure: whether the actions finally match the words.