Key points
- A 25-year plan. The Muslim Vote explicitly announces a “5-election plan covering 25 years” to “redraw the political landscape of the United Kingdom.”
- A gap with the grassroots. Only 25% of British Muslims place Gaza in their top 3 concerns; the cost of living remains their number one priority (50%).
- A structured funding network. £75,000 from the Cur8 Capital fund to TMV in 2025; more than £80,000 from the ICJP to independent MPs; a database of 2,500 Muslim names to target voters.
- Confirmed electoral performance. 4 independent MPs elected in 2024; more than 100 independent Muslim councillors elected in May 2026.
1. Presentation of the document and its publisher
This report is the second part of a Policy Exchange investigation devoted to a new phenomenon in British political life: the emergence of an organized populist movement within the Muslim minority, which the authors dub “islamopopulism.” Published just days before the English local elections of May 2026, it documents the national infrastructure (The Muslim Vote, Vote Palestine) and three local strongholds (Birmingham, Newham, Blackburn).
- Publication. Policy Exchange, London, May 2026, 80 pages, ISBN 978-1-918832-01-3. The first part (polling, May 2026) published separately under the title Understanding Islamopopulism.
- Publisher. Policy Exchange is a British think tank founded in 2002, classified as centre-right, specializing in public policy on security, integration and social cohesion. It is one of the main producers of critical reports on political Islamism in the United Kingdom.
- Authors. Andrew Gilligan (Senior Fellow, former adviser to the Prime Minister 2019-2022), Paul Stott (Head of Security and Extremism), Rakib Ehsan (Senior Fellow, a researcher of Bangladeshi Muslim background specializing in integration and identity).
- Key concept. Islamopopulism refers, according to the authors, to an electoral populist movement structured around the mobilization of British Muslims (about 4 million people), distinct from right-wing populism (Reform UK) and left-wing populism (Greens, Your Party), but liable to form occasional alliances with the latter.
2. Methodology
The report combines a fine-grained documentary investigation (public statements, Islamic podcasts, the protagonists' social media accounts, submissions to radical-left conferences) with a quantified electoral analysis at three scales: national (the 2024 general election), regional (the 2025 local elections in Lancashire) and local (the 2026 municipal elections). Three case studies ground the findings in specific territories.
- Type. A mixed-methods empirical study combining discourse analysis, actor mapping, electoral results analysis and demographic data (the 2011 and 2021 censuses, mid-2024 ONS estimates).
- Sources. TMV's X and Instagram accounts (959 tweets on Israel-Palestine vs 148 on the economy and 25 on the NHS since the general election), filmed appearances by its leaders (Muhammad Jalal, Abubakr Nanabawa, Riaz Hassan), financial documents of the Cur8 Capital fund, parliamentary registers of interests, High Court judgments.
- Case studies. Birmingham (101 councillors, 41 islamopopulist candidates), Newham (66 councillors, 66 candidates, 26 elected for Newham Independents), Blackburn with Darwen (51 councillors, the 4BwD party rising from 13 to 17 seats).
- Theoretical framework. It draws on the classic grid of populism (pure people vs corrupt elite, alarmism, disinformation, charismatic leadership, a left-right cross-cutting appeal) and transposes it to the confessionalization of the vote. It explicitly compares islamopopulism to Thatcherite Euroscepticism as a mobilizing matrix.
3. Central thesis
The report's central thesis is that Britain now faces a third populism, distinct from right-wing and left-wing populisms, organized around Muslim identity and structured at the national scale by the organization The Muslim Vote (TMV) and its offshoot Vote Palestine. Far from being a spontaneous reaction to the war in Gaza, this movement is carrying out an explicit twenty-five-year plan aimed at turning the Muslim electoral weight into a lever for transforming the British political system, under the watchword of a society in which “Islam would be honoured as it should be and Muslims would be regarded with respect.” The authors argue that the Palestinian cause functions in this apparatus as an “organizing idea” - a term used in the report to denote a mobilizing theme whose political function exceeds the issue itself - making it possible to catalyse a radical critique of the West, of capitalism and of the liberal order, and to join forces with the most radical components of the British left. The ultimate objective is not only to defend the interests of the Muslim minority but, in the words of one of the movement's founders, Muhammad Jalal, a former leader of the now-proscribed Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, “to design a world built on Islamic principles where we will be able to shape history and order the world.”
4. The argumentative architecture
The report unfolds six chained demonstrations that revolve around the central pivot of The Muslim Vote and converge toward a demonstration of electoral performance. The diagram below sets out their overall structure.
4.1. A strategic plan structured over twenty-five years
What is demonstrated. That The Muslim Vote is not a short-term initiative born of the emotion stirred by Gaza, but an organization equipped with a long-term political project aimed at the lasting transformation of the British political landscape.
The evidence. At a founding meeting of 200 Muslim leaders held in Aston (Birmingham) on 8 June 2024, the national coordinator Abubakr Nanabawa described the 2024 success as “the first stage of a 20-to-30-year process.” The Islamist outlet Islam21c, affiliated with TMV, speaks of a “5-election plan covering 25 years.” Muhammad Jalal, former British leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir between 2000 and 2007 and a pivotal figure in TMV, states that the aim is to “redraw the political landscape of the United Kingdom.” Nanabawa explicitly compares the undertaking to Saladin retaking Jerusalem during the Crusades.
Analysis. This inscription in the long term sharply distinguishes islamopopulism from short-lived identity protests. The reference to Saladin is not incidental: it is constitutive of the mobilizing narrative that TMV offers its sympathizers. The gradual approach - first building the infrastructure, then waiting for “the Saladins” to emerge - traces a patient political strategy, one that banks on the long haul rather than on a sudden surge.
4.2. A structured apparatus of funding and electoral targeting
What is demonstrated. That islamopopulism has an identified financial, technical and data infrastructure, which makes it a political organization in the full sense of the term, and not a mere coalition of opinion.
The evidence. The report documents the funding of TMV by the “Community Impact Fund” managed by Cur8 Capital (aka Islamic Finance Guru), a Muslim investment fund whose stated aim is to promote the “strength of the ummah” and to “usher in a day when Islam is honoured as it should be.” This fund paid £75,000 to TMV in 2025, out of a total budget of £594,000 (including £30,000 to the Islamophobia Response Unit, £25,000 to the Muslim Council of Britain and £10,000 to IERA, an organization previously linked to several ISIS fighters). The International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) paid more than £80,000 to the independent MPs elected in 2024. TMV's data director, Riaz Hassan, publicly describes the use of a database of about 2,500 common Muslim names cross-referenced with the electoral register to identify Muslim households in 17 target constituencies, covering more than 500,000 voters.
Analysis. This apparatus reveals an organization comparable to that of Britain's major political parties. Targeting by surname is a significant novelty in British electoral politics and raises questions about the boundaries between legitimate community mobilization and the systematic confessionalization of the vote. The financial mapping also brings to light a network of satellite organizations (MCB, MEND, Islamophobia Response Unit) that finance one another circularly and multiply its influence.
4.3. A communal agenda out of step with the real concerns of British Muslims
What is demonstrated. That the priorities TMV displays do not reflect the real hierarchy of concerns of the Muslim grassroots it claims to represent, but result from a strategic choice by its leaders.
The evidence. Six of TMV's eighteen pre-election demands concern Israel and Palestine; almost none touch on the cost of living, the NHS, the economy or employment. Since the general election, TMV has posted 959 tweets on Israel-Palestine against 148 on the economy and 25 on the NHS. On the account of the co-leader of Birmingham's islamopopulist alliance, Akhmed Yakoob, between March and mid-April 2026 there are 47 posts on Israel-Palestine and 23 on Iran against 6 on local issues. Policy Exchange's benchmark poll shows, however, that only 25% of British Muslims place Gaza among their three main concerns; their number one priority remains the cost of living (50%). The Savanta poll of June 2024 (before the general election) confirms this: only 21% of Muslims placed Gaza at the top. Only 13% of Muslims say they have seen TMV material in the past six months, and 21% Vote Palestine material.
Analysis. This gap produces one of the report's most politically significant findings: islamopopulism does not electorally represent the Muslim community in its real diversity. It mobilizes a militant, male fraction of it (TMV has no woman in its leadership; all the independent MPs are men), mostly of Pakistani or Bangladeshi background (Arab, African, Turkish or Kurdish Muslims are almost absent), and one that carries an Islamist reading grid in which the defence of Israel is the central marker of Western “betrayal.” In the 2024 general election, despite four symbolic victories, 16 of the 20 most Muslim seats were still won by Labour.
4.4. Gaza as the “organizing idea” of a broader political project
What is demonstrated. That the centrality of the Palestinian question in TMV's discourse is explained not by its real electoral weight but by its ideological function: Gaza operates as a point of crystallization that makes it possible to articulate anti-Westernism, anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism and anti-capitalism within a unified narrative.
The evidence. The authors draw on two documents submitted in 2025 to the radical-left conference The World Transformed. The first, signed by the Palestinian Youth Movement (a component of Vote Palestine), asserts that “the Zionist movement” annihilated socialist hope in Britain between 2017 and 2019 by dismantling the Corbyn wing of Labour; that this movement “illuminates the coercive bureaucracies of the state” to erode rights, intimidate universities and persecute minorities; and that a “revolutionary, anti-imperialist and explicitly anti-Zionist party” must be built that “will confront Zionism.” The second document, co-signed by TMV and the PYM, calls for the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel and the cessation of all public investment in companies benefiting from “Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonialism.” Muhammad Jalal, for his part, declares: “We ultimately want to design a world built on Islamic principles.”
Analysis. This is the report's most original contribution. The authors identify the real function of Gaza in the TMV apparatus: not the defence of a foreign cause for its own sake, but the theme that makes it possible to constitute a militant public and to hold together a comprehensive critique of British society - from the colonizing West to rapacious capitalism, by way of the hypocrisy of the liberal order. The comparison with UKIP is illuminating: like the European Union for the Eurosceptics, Gaza is less a final objective than a fulcrum that makes possible a complete political narrative and a cross-cutting coalition. This reading overlaps with what French sociology of the Muslim Brotherhood calls the instrumentalization of the Palestinian cause: Palestine is not defended there first and foremost for the Palestinians, but mobilized to extend the influence of an Islamist project that far exceeds it.
4.5. Structural links with organized Islamism, including the British Muslim Brotherhood
What is demonstrated. That British islamopopulism is not an autonomous political phenomenon but is rooted in established, identified and documented Islamist networks, part of which explicitly belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood sphere.
The evidence. The four main speakers at TMV's founding meeting (Birmingham, 8 June 2024) are: Haitham al-Haddad - classified as an extremist by the Commission for Countering Extremism (2018), a public supporter of the 7 October 2023 attacks, who presents himself as a “member” of TMV; Anas Altikriti - president of the Muslim Association of Britain, designated by the British government in March 2024 as the British branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, who justified the 7 October attacks and criticizes the proscription of Hamas, and who presents himself as an “adviser” to TMV; Sufyan Ismail - founder and principal funder of MEND, who compares contemporary Britain to the conditions that made the Shoah possible; Muhammad Jalal, aka Jalaluddin Patel, former national leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir between 2000 and 2007, an organization now proscribed as a terrorist group. To this list are added Wajid Akhter, who became secretary general of the MCB in early 2025 and who calls on British Muslims to define themselves first as Muslims rather than as British, and Shakeel Afsar (Birmingham), who publicly demands that the British taxpayer “arm Hamas” with “weapons, rifles, missiles.”
Analysis. The picture drawn by the report is strikingly clear: TMV brings together almost all the British organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (MAB, MCB, MEND, IERA) or descended from neighbouring extremist groups (Hizb ut-Tahrir). In CERIF's reading, this finding reinforces the thesis that the British Muslim Brotherhood - which the authors locally refer to as “political Islamism” or “community organising” - has found in the instrumentalization of the Palestinian cause the electoral lever it had lacked until now. The move of Wajid Akhter from TMV to the general secretariat of the MCB in 2025 attests to a circulation of cadres between organizations presented as “political” and organizations presented as “representative.” The active support of Akhmed Yakoob for the Iranian regime (attendance at the vigil for Khamenei, statements on Quds Day, counter-demonstrations outside the Birmingham mosque) - treated only incidentally by the authors - is a reminder, according to CERIF's analytical grid, that British islamopopulism also has pro-Iranian Shia branches that would deserve treatment in their own right.
4.6. A strategy of opportunistic alliances with the radical left
What is demonstrated. That islamopopulism does not operate in communal isolation but deploys a systematic policy of tactical alliances with the forces of the British radical left, despite profound divergences over social values.
The evidence. TMV endorsed 256 candidates in the 2024 general election: 51 independent Muslims, 31 candidates of George Galloway's Workers Party, 56 Greens, 40 Liberal Democrats (including their leader Ed Davey) and 59 Scottish and Welsh nationalists. At the Gorton-Denton by-election (February 2026), TMV backed the Green candidate who won it. In October 2025, Nanabawa and Muhammad Jalal took part in a public event on “red-green alliances” with the Green leader Zack Polanski and the Your Party MP Zarah Sultana. Jalal publicly states that he wants to negotiate a “grand deal” to share out territory between independent Muslims, Your Party and the Greens. The Workers Party struck a formal pact with the Independent Candidate Alliance in Birmingham at the 2026 municipal elections.
Analysis. This alliance strategy confirms the reading set out by the report in chapter 4: Gaza-Palestine acts as the political cement between the Islamist components and the anti-imperialist components of the far left. The rift between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana within Your Party (where the independent MPs side with Corbyn, perceived as more respectful of TMV's “social conservatism”) sheds light on the strategic dimension of these alliances: what prevails is not a convergence of values but of shared targets (Israel, Labour, the British security state). The report also notes with precision the doctrinal contradictions (Yakoob calling the Greens “degenerates” when they encroach on his constituencies), which sketch a movement that is at once tactically open and ideologically closed.
5. The authors' conclusions
The authors conclude with the finding that islamopopulism represents, in their own words, “the greatest extremist threat in British politics at least since the era of the British National Party,” and they set out six operational recommendations.
- Political quarantine. No party should consider working with the islamopopulists; the Greens must learn the lessons of their recent antisemitic incidents.
- Rejecting TMV endorsements. All parties - especially the Liberal Democrats, whose very name commits them - must explicitly repudiate The Muslim Vote's endorsements.
- Action against breaches. The electoral authorities and the Solicitors Regulation Authority must deal rigorously with the abuses already documented in Birmingham (statements potentially amounting to hate speech, the conduct of candidates Yakoob and Afsar).
- Naming communalism. Labour must stop practising ethno-confessional politics in its strongholds and publicly name communalism as a threat to cohesion.
- Campaign language. Campaign material must be produced only in English, Welsh or other official British languages; the Electoral Commission must stop producing its own materials in several languages.
- Proscription of the PFLP. The government must consider proscribing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the Terrorism Act, in order to criminalize its glorification.
Dr Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Anthropologist, Research Fellow at the CNRS (HDR)
Founding President of CERIF - European Center for Research and Information on the Muslim Brotherhood
cerif.eu