UK election 2024: Pro-Palestine candidate Ayoub Khan pulls off shock win against Khalid Mahmood

Pro-Palestine independent candidate Ayoub Khan pulled off a shock win against Labour’s long-standing parliamentarian Khalid Mahmood in the UK general election on Friday, winning the seat of Birmingham’s Perry Barr by a slim majority of 507 votes.

Khan secured 13,303 votes in total, winning with 35.5 percent of the vote share, while Mahmood, who has represented the constituency since 2001, received 12,796 votes, or 34.1 percent of the vote share.

Khan, a local councillor and barrister by profession, resigned from the Liberal Democrats in May, claiming that “they wanted to prevent me from speaking about Gaza.”

Campaigning on local issues like cost of living, crime and unemployment, as well as on Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, he received significant backing from the constituency’s Muslim voter base.

Mahmood, first elected for Labour in 2001, had repeatedly lauded his credentials as an MP and once described himself as “the most senior serving Muslim parliamentarian.”

However, in the past week, the veteran politician faced a deluge of criticism among members of the Muslim community for arguing with worshippers at a mosque over Labour’s position on Gaza, in a video which was shared widely on social media.

“Shut up and listen, please,” he could be heard saying in the video. “Give me respect. I give you respect, just listen.”

For several months, voters across the UK voiced dissatisfaction with Labour, especially over the party’s early stance when it called for an “enduring cessation of fighting” instead of a comprehensive ceasefire.

Although Mahmood challenged Labour leader Keir Starmer in November to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza, many said they felt compelled to vote for an unwaveringly pro-ceasefire candidate and party.

Israel’s war on Gaza, now nearing its tenth month, has destroyed large swathes of the besieged territory and forced nearly the entire population to flee their homes at least once.

More than 38,000 people have been killed, the vast majority of them women and children. Thousands more are missing or presumed to be dead under the rubble.

Communicable diseases are rapidly spreading, and infant mortality has skyrocketed.

Mahmood, despite serving as an MP for Birmingham Perry Barr for more than two decades, was no stranger to controversy.

A firm supporter of both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq under Tony Blair’s Labour government, he later became a proponent of the now-debunked Trojan Horse conspiracy that there was a plot by Muslims to take over Birmingham schools.

Mahmood never acknowledged that the Trojan Horse plot was a hoax.

Although it was a spectacular night for Labour, with the party winning a landslide victory with at least 411 seats in the 650 seat House of Commons, it performed badly in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters.

Labour lost five seats with large Muslim populations to four to independents and one to the Conservatives.

In Holborn and St Pancras, Starmer held his London seat but with a significantly decreased majority – down 17 percent from the last election – whilst in Ilford North, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting was among those who saw his majority fall from more than 9,000 in 2019 to just 528.