For supposedly one of the biggest losers in Labour’s history, Jeremy Corbyn has certainly won a lot of elections. Two leadership contests by huge margins, and 10 consecutive victories in his parliamentary constituency, Islington North. Since first being elected there 41 years ago, he has increased his majority from a modest 5,607 to a formidable 26,188.
So his announcement that he is running as an independent in the general election, a plan that he has hinted at for months, has a degree of confidence behind it. In the bustling, congested streets of his traditionally left-leaning constituency, seemingly everyone knows “Jeremy”, and the famously conscientious MP knows them. “He may have the highest constituency name recognition of any MP in the country,” a local Labour councillor told me.
Corbyn’s campaign is also likely to draw in activists from all over Britain: people who joined Labour for the duration of his deeply flawed but compelling leadership, people who share his position on Gaza, and people who simply don’t like Keir Starmer and the much more cautious and centrist party he has created. As when Ken Livingstone successfully stood as an independent for the London mayoralty in 2000 – having, like Corbyn, been prevented from standing as a Labour candidate – a political bandwagon could be created that is impossible to stop.
With Labour looking likely to win the general election easily, at least at this early stage, volunteering or voting for Corbyn appears to offer a rare chance to be part of a high-profile and successful rebellion against the constricting orthodoxies of current British politics – without inadvertently helping the Tories in any significant way. One fewer Labour MP is unlikely to make much difference to the balance of power between the two main parties in the next parliament.
Unsurprisingly, the Labour hierarchy doesn’t see Corbyn’s candidacy that way. To an arguably unprecedented extent, Starmer’s leadership has been based on repudiating his predecessor, on declaring again and again that Corbynism was an electoral and moral dead end. If Corbyn wins as an independent, despite all Labour’s attempts to make him politically irrelevant, then Starmer’s authority – his almost Thatcher-like insistence that there is no alternative to his approach – will be dented.
The Conservatives will continue to use Corbyn to try to embarrass Starmer, by reminding voters that Starmer used to serve under him. Meanwhile other, less rightwing parties may already be anticipating forming informal voting alliances with Corbyn in parliament, against the austere policies a Starmer government seems likely to follow, at least at first. Even during Tony Blair’s premiership, with its massive majorities and charismatic leader, Corbyn showed himself capable of making a great deal of trouble for the government in parliament. As an independent MP who will be free of any pressure the Labour whips used to be able to bring to bear on him, sought out by journalists wanting anti-Starmer stories, and seen by many Britons as a lone voice of principle – perhaps replacing the outgoing Green MP, Caroline Lucas, in that role – Corbyn could make his previous parliamentary incarnation look almost obedient.
But we are not there yet. Over the next six weeks, the irresistible force of Labour’s increasingly effective electoral machine, which has already overturned several large Tory majorities in byelections, will meet the immovable object of one of the most stubborn people in British politics. “When I was first elected, I made a promise to stand by my constituents no matter what,” Corbyn wrote with characteristic self-righteousness when he announced his independent candidacy this morning. “In Islington North, we keep our promises.”
Underneath, he may be feeling less robust. This Sunday he will turn 75. He joined Labour at the age of 16, and running against the party that has dominated his entire adult life will be a strain. “He’s torn,” his close ally Diane Abbott, who herself may soon have to decide whether to run against Labour as an independent, told me a few months ago. “He’s a Labour person. He’s always been a Labour person.” Corbyn is intensely self-sufficient: it has been his strength and weakness as a politician. But serving as an independent MP, if he manages to win, may bring a new form of isolation.
Before then, in what could be a very predictable and stage-managed election, Corbyn’s last stand, and perhaps Abbott’s as well, may at least provide some political theatre – as well as something more important. Two of the last representatives of Britain’s pioneering, politically underachieving but socially influential late-20th century left, striving to stay in parliament a little longer. Whether you admire or despise them, we may not see their like again.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist. His book on Corbyn, Abbott and the Labour left, The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies, is out now
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