Priti Patel was left floundering as she tried to defend her party’s claims of ‘sectarian voting’ from the Muslim community in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
During an appearance on LBC, the Tory shadow minister was challenged by Lewis Goodall about recent claims from Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch regarding last week’s by-election.
Goodall put it to Patel that there have been many occasions in the past where voters of one community have collectively voted for parties that represent their interests.
He asked the shadow foreign secretary why it was suddenly an issue when the Muslim community decide to do this.
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When Patel accused the Greens of “playing the Muslim community” to “secure their own electoral base,” Goodall pointed out that the Tories had previously run campaigns and videos specifically targeting the British Indian community.
Goodall asked what the difference was between this and the videos the Green Party ran in Gorton and Denton.
Predictably, Patel couldn’t provide a single good reason in response.
Both the Tories and Reform have accused the Green Party, whose candidate Hannah Spencer won the election by more than 4,000 votes, of stirring ‘sectarian voting’ amongst the constituency’s Muslim community.
The accusations were largely sparked by a Green Party campaign video which was in Urdu.
After the polls closed, there were then reports of ‘family voting’ in polling stations, prompting Reform to call for an investigation and accusations of “Muslim sectarianism” from the party’s defeated candidate Matt Goodwin.
Meanwhile, Badenoch said in a statement that Labour had “created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes” and that the Greens had run a “nasty, sectarian campaign.”
For the record, the Tories won less than 2% of the vote in the by-election, losing their deposit in the process.