The Jeremy Corbyn chapter of Labour history formally ended when Sir Keir Starmer became leader. The plan now is to ensure it can never be reopened.
Key to that will be a decision by the party’s National Executive Committee tomorrow on whether to formally block Corbyn from running as the Labour candidate in Islington North, where he has been the MP since 1983.
Starmer had already said that his predecessor would not be able to stand for Labour. The new move to bar him is on the basis that Corbyn’s candidacy would cut against the broader aim of maximising the party’s prospects at the next election.
Preventing Corbyn from standing is the right decision. The former leader remains in denial over the extent of anti-semitism in the party when he was in charge. Indeed, when the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its report, Corbyn claimed the scale of the problem had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons,” leading to his suspension.
It remains a problem for Starmer that he served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and would have presumably done so in government had Labour won the 2019 election.
But it is clear that Starmer has made urgent and necessary steps to rid the party of anti-semitism and provide a serious alternative to a Conservative government.
Strip-search scandal
New analysis by children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has uncovered the shocking number of children — some as young as eight years old — being stopped and strip-searched by police.
A total of 2,847 children were strip-searched in the past four years in England and Wales. Black children were six times more likely to face this treatment. These findings come in the wake of outrage over the appalling treatment of Child Q, the black 15-year-old schoolgirl who was strip-searched after she was wrongly accused of carrying cannabis in east London.
While the practice is not limited to the Met, it is clearly another challenge for the force following the Casey report. It is vital, especially when dealing with children, that all guidelines be strictly followed. The safety of young people must always remain paramount.
Cycling must be safe
If we want more people to cycle around London, it has to be safe. To that end, Transport for London has today announced more than £63m for councils to improve active and sustainable schemes.
This includes backing Camden council’s plans to overhaul the Holborn gyratory, where eight cyclists have been killed since 2008. There is also funding for further cycle training for more than 20,000 adults and 40,000 children.
There is no reason why the capital ought not to be the best place in Britain to cycle and walk.
