Jeremy Corbyn will not be Labour candidate at next election, confirms Starmer

Jeremy Corbyn will not be a Labour candidate at the next general election, party leader Sir Keir Starmer has said.

Speaking at a media conference held by Labour as Britain’s equality watchdog lifted the party out of special measures on antisemitism, Starmer  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.”

Starmer also repeated his call, made in an article for The Times newspaper, for the hard-left in his party to either back him, or leave.

He said:”The changes we have made aren’t just fiddling around the edges or temporary fixes. They are permanent, fundamental, irrevocable.

‘The Labour Party I lead today is unrecognisable from 2019. There are those who don’t like that change, who still refuse to see the reality of what had gone on under the previous leadership.

‘To them I say in all candour: we are never going back. If you don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to stay.”

The former Labour leader was suspended in October 2020 for saying that that while “one antisemite is one too many” he believed that “the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the medi

The former Labour leader had hoped to be readmitted so he could stand for re-election as a Labour candidate.

In now means he faces the prospect of fighting the Islington North seat as an independent, with a Labour candidate standing against him.

Despite securing a big majority in the seat in 2019, it becomes notoriously difficult taking on official Labour candidates in a seat as an independent at a general election.

Starmer also said the party had changed under his leadership and “we are not going back”, adding that if others did not back him they could leave.

During Wednesday’s media event, Dame Margaret Hodge and Board of Deputies president Marie Van der Zyl both gave speeches at the venue in Aldgate, east London.

Labour MP Hodge said  the party has “moved on from the very dark days of October 2020 when the EHRC judged us to be a party that was discriminating against Jews.”

In her speech the Board president stressed she was speaking from a politically neutral position, but she praised the work Starmer had done in changing Labour’s relationship with the community.

She also praised the work of the Jewish Labour Movement in battling against the antisemites in the party.

Starmer  also said antisemitism was “an evil” and “no political party that cultivates it deserves to hold power”.

“Today is an important moment in the history of the Labour Party. It’s taken many, many months of hard work and humility to get here,” Starmer said.

“It’s meant rebuilding trust, not just with the Jewish community but with all those who were rightly appalled by the culture of the party and the previous leadership.

“When I became leader, I said I would turn Labour around and give it back to the British people and the most important and urgent part of that was tearing out antisemitism by its roots.”