\n<\/p>\n
M<\/span>ohammed Suleman, a self-described \u201cstraight-talking Geordie\u201d, doesn\u2019t love politics. The taxi driver and businessman prefers to focus on community initiatives. But when the time came, he voted Labour<\/a> as the lesser of two evils.<\/p>\n Then came the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the best she could do was abstain,\u201d Suleman said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I blew my top.\u201d<\/p>\n Suleman was speaking before heading out canvassing in Arthur\u2019s Hill, to the west of Newcastle. The city is often described as segregated: a white working-class east and a more diverse west, both long central to Labour\u2019s base. But while Labour has spent years trying to win over \u201chero voters\u201d in the east, it has been slower to reckon with a tectonic shift among Muslim voters.<\/p>\n