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LONDON: Pro-Palestine election candidates in the UK could unseat top government ministers at the next general election, leading pollsters have said.

Figures including Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood will likely face major battles to keep their seats despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to potentially recognize a Palestinian state, .

At the last election in 2024, a pro-Palestine candidate unseated a key member of Starmer’s team, Jonathan Ashworth. Streeting retained his seat but with a tiny majority of 528, down from 5,198 in 2019.

Mounting public anger over Britain’s response to the Gaza war could cause major embarrassment for the government at the next election, pollsters say.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader and now independent MP, has announced a new party that could also take a chunk of votes from the government by highlighting the Gaza crisis.

John Curtice, the country’s top pollster, told The Independent that Starmer’s pledge to recognize a Palestinian state in September — should Israel fail to meet key conditions — “may not be sufficient” for voters.

Both Streeting and Mahmood are in significant danger of losing their seats at the next election, while other ministers and MPs could also fall if anger continues to grow over Gaza.

Starmer had also “lost out” on votes in his own constituency last year because of concerns over Gaza, Curtice said.

However, the prime minister’s majority is substantially larger than some of his Cabinet ministers.

“Here is somebody (Starmer) who spent a great deal of time and effort trying to reconnect with the Jewish community, and now he’s finding himself having to spend a great deal of effort trying to reconnect with the Muslim community. It is very difficult to keep himself on board with both groups at the moment,” Curtice said.

When Corbyn launched his party last week, he said its members would campaign heavily on Palestine, as well as Britain’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Luke Tryl of polling firm More in Common said events in Gaza and government policy toward the war have revealed “deeper” problems within the ruling Labour Party.

“When we have done focus groups with voters in Muslim areas, particularly some of those who backed or were thinking about backing pro-Gaza independent candidates, I compared it to speaking to voters in the red wall after Brexit,” he said.

“In the sense that Brexit was the thing which caused the split, but it actually brought to the fore much deeper resentments — that they have been taken from granted, ignored, left behind by Labour … I think we’re going to see exactly the same thing with Muslim voters.”

BELGRADE: Serbia rejected on Saturday a Bosnian appeals court ruling upholding a prison sentence for Milorad Dodik, the leader of Bosnia’s ethnic Serb entity, the Republika Srpska (RS).

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the court decision undermined security in the Balkan region.

In February, a court in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, sentenced Dodik to one year behind bars for defying rulings by the international envoy overseeing Bosnia’s 1995 peace accords.

It also banned Dodik, who has not so far been arrested, from holding office for six years.

Bosnia’s appeals court said on Friday it had upheld the lower court ruling and no further appeal was allowed.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of Serbia’s National Security Council, Vucic said the rulings were “a destabilising factor.”

“The security situation in the region has been seriously undermined,” he alleged.

Since the end of Bosnia’s ethnic conflict in the 1990s, the country of 3.5 million has consisted of two autonomous halves — the Serb-dominated RS and a Muslim-Croat federation.

The two are linked by weak central institutions, while each has its own government and parliament.

Dodik has repeatedly threatened to pull the Serb statelet out of Bosnia’s central institutions — including its army, judiciary and tax system.

Asked on Saturday asked whether Dodik would be arrested if a warrant were issued and he entered Serbian territory, Vucic said he would not.

“All relevant state authorities are obliged to respect the decision of the National Security Council,” he said.

“Milorad Dodik is welcome on the territory of the Republic of Serbia. He is the legitimately, legally elected president of Republika Srpska.”

In its conclusions, which Vucic read out, the security council said the Bosnian appeal court ruling was undemocratic, immoral and “a serious attack on the Serbian people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

“The political and security situation in the region has been seriously destabilized,” the council continued.

“There is a tendency toward further deterioration and an incitement to ethnic conflict directly targeting the Serbian people,” it alleged.

The council “urged all actors in the region to remain calm and approach the situation rationally“

It added: “Such acts directly undermine the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina, established by the Dayton peace agreement.”

Vucic said Serbia would continue to insist on full respect for the 1995 Dayton accords and said the current situation was the most difficult for the country in many years.

Reacting on X, Dodik thanked Vucic and the security council.

“Serbia has always been committed to Republika Srpska and has never done anything against
Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.

Dodik’s conviction set off a crisis that many observers considered the worst since Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

He has rejected the trial and his conviction as “political.”

In response, the RS parliament passed a law prohibiting Bosnia’s central police and judicial authorities from operating in the Serb entity.

Bosnia’s constitutional court annulled those laws in May.