Campaigning in Newcastle before next month’s local elections shows the rise of the far right, the climate and cost of living are concerning voters as much as the Middle East
M
ohammed Suleman, a self-described “straight-talking Geordie”, doesn’t love politics. The taxi driver and businessman prefers to focus on community initiatives. But when the time came, he voted Labour as the lesser of two evils.
Then came the war in Gaza.
A month into the war, which a UN committee would later describe as a genocide, Suleman, and others at his local mosque, began a petition calling on their Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West Labour MP, Chi Onwurah, to vote for a ceasefire. He knew it was largely symbolic, but it represented something important: that the children of Palestine, who looked like his and were raised in the same faith, mattered.
