• Five independent Members of Parliament have joined forces establishing themselves as the joint fifth-largest party in the House of Commons.
• The new Independent Alliance will look to recruitother sitting MPs in a bid to pressure the Government over their Zionist policies.
Jeremy Corbyn has formed a new Parliamentary group in the House of Commons, with the support of four other independent MPs.
Standing with Mr Corbyn, the four other alliance members, Shokat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed signed a joint statement confirming the formation of a “technical group”, which was submitted to the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.
Following the formation of this Independent Alliance now means they have more sitting MPs than the Green Party and carry the same number as Reform UK, though only temporarily as they confirm wanting to recruit more MPs into their group.
It should be said that the Independent Alliance is not a political party but rather a parliamentary grouping that will sit together in the House of Commons. This allows the alliance members to maintain their own autonomy while working collectively on shared goals and objectives.
Cross-Party Efforts
Their establishment as a group comes after seven MPs, who happen to be Corbyn’s allies and now also sit as independents, were suspended from the Labour Party.
So far there has been no formal coordination between Independent Alliance MPs and suspended Labour MPs, however, it is hoped that the creation of this group would be the encouragement needed for them to join especially as Keir Starmer had exiled them from the Labour Party for six months after voting in favour of abolishing the two-child benefit cap.
The cap disproportionately affects most Muslim families according to a report by the Muslim Council of Britain, which subsequently came to be labelled as an “extremist organisation” by the previous government andis yet to be overturned by Starmer and the Labour Party.
The Independent Alliance had already been working together informally for months alongside the Green Party and Scottish National Party MPs, calling for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped and more recently other austerity issues, specifically restoring winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
Corbyn Fights Injustice
Crucially, the call to scrap the two-child benefit limit cap happens to be one of the many wider issues which the Independent Alliance aims topressure Labour on, while most importantly, campaigning to completelyend arms sales to Israelis over the genocide they are committing against Palestinians remains an urgent priority.
Mr Corbyn himself has posted numerous social media posts on X in recent days calling out the obvious contradictions found within recent Labour Party statements saying there is no money to feed children in the UK, yet they are sending countless billions to Israelis so they can kill Palestinians and their children.
Labour Fails the Muslim Ummah
In truth, many of the policies and issues Labour is now tackling such as the recent riots, failure to call out Islamophobic crimes and the removal of the two-child benefit cap, to name a few have had a direct or indirect impact on the majority of Muslims in the UK and have not beenadequately addressed.
Having only been two months since the election, the independent MPs have continued to directly engage with the public, even during times when they and their families have been targets of Islamophobia.
In an interview with MEE, Shokat Adam revealed that he and his family faced regular racial abuse and verbal attacks, in the run-up to the general election.
“People from my team were often racially abused when they knocked on doors or on polling day," he said, "including my son, who was standing outside a polling station and was greeted with the P-word.”
Even after being elected, Adam says the Islamophobic and racist tirades against them have not stopped.
“I have faced a torrent of abuse online and in real life, as have people in my family.”
It is widely believed that Labour’s position on the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the belief they would continue assisting Israelisbeing de facto Zionists, rather than the independent MPs’ stance in stopping the genocide of Palestinians, became the deciding factors for many voters which led to the candidates winning their respectiveconstituencies owing to the large Muslim populations.
Independent Alliance Goals, Objectives and Obstacles
Despite attaining surprising and hard-fought victories over rival Labour candidates in last July’s general election, the newly elected Independent Muslim MPs will need to work harder now in the hope of gaining the opportunity to both, choose debate topics and be allocated more questions in Parliament.
According to the existing UK parliamentary rules, political parties withat least five elected MPs are eligible to receive public funds in the form of “short money”, which is provided to the opposition parties to support their research work. This funding was made available for up to a total amount of £129,000.
However, these funds cannot currently be made available to new groups that are formed between general elections in accordance with parliamentary rules. This means that new groups that do not meet the five MP threshold would not be eligible to receive short money.
To overcome this limitation, newly formed groups or Independent MPs can potentially work together to share resources and host joint fundraisers. By collaborating in this way, they may be able to pool their resources and become eligible for short money funding, thereby allowing them to secure additional financial support for their campaign work and research activities.
Whilst they learn to navigate their way through the challenges put to them by parliamentary rules, in a joint statement the MPs, of whom all except Corbyn are Muslim, said this of the existing Labour government and their continued endeavour of providing hope to the wider public.
“We were elected by our constituents to provide hope in a Parliament of despair. Already, this Government has scrapped the winter fuel allowance for around 10 million pensioners, voted to keep the two-child benefits cap, and ignored calls to end arms sales to Israel.
“Millions of people are crying out for a real alternative to austerity, inequality and war – and their voices deserve to be heard. As individuals we were voted by our constituents to represent their concerns in Parliament on these matters, and more, and we believe that as a collective group we can carry on doing this with greater effect.
“The more MPs who are prepared to stand up for these principles, the better. Our door is always open to other MPs who believe in a more equal and peaceful world.”
