Sir Keir Starmer has announced that Jeremy Corbyn "will not stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election". Speaking to reporters yesterday morning, (February 14), the Labour leader was asked if he could “categorically” say whether or not his predecessor will stand for the party at the next election.
Sir Keir said: "Let me be very clear about that: Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the next general election, as a Labour Party candidate. What I said about the party changing, I meant, and we are not going back, and that is why Jeremy Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election."
Mr Corbyn has been MP for Islington north since 1983 and has been sitting as an independent since Sir Keir withdrew the Labour whip from him in October 2020. This was following his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into antisemitism in the party.
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It is not yet clear whether Mr Corbyn would stand as an independent against an official Labour candidate. In December, Sir Keir said he could not see how the former party leader could stand as a Labour candidate at the next election.
Sir Keir said: "I don’t see the circumstances in which he will stand at the next election as a Labour MP."
Some supporters believe Corbyn's personal appeal to constituents and his devoted supporters could see him win a contest which had previously helped propel him to leader. Sir Keir was asked about this on Radio 4 yesterday to which he replied: "I can only speak for the Labour Party, I can’t speak for Jeremy on this."
Mr Corbyn believes the whip was "wrongly removed and it should be reinstated". He had his party membership reinstated within weeks, but he was refused admission him to the group of Labour MPs. In his initial response to the EHRC report, Mr Corbyn claimed the scale of antisemitism in the party had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by opponents both inside and outside Labour, along with the media.
But he later attempted to clarify his comments in a statement to the party, saying concerns about antisemitism are "neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated'".
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