Shadow cabinet ministers have privately urged Keir Starmer to draw a line under Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from Labour and allow the party to begin the process of selecting a new candidate in Islington North.
The Guardian has learned of at least two Labour frontbenchers who say they have counselled for the party to inform Corbyn the party would no longer be prepared to support his candidacy at the next election.
“The time for waiting for a fantasy apology is over,” one said. “Leaving it to drift only causes more damage.” However, another senior member of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) said there was reason for Labour to be cautious, given the need to assess the electoral picture in the north London seat.
The former leader is still supported by most of the local Islington North constituency party. Corbyn still hopes to be the Labour candidate but is considering running as an independent if the whip is not restored to him.
Many other constituencies have already commenced – or completed – the reselection process necessary to confirm candidates for the next general election but it has not yet begun in Islington North, with Corbyn’s future still unclear. “They’re in limbo,” said a senior party source.
The selection procedure could go down a number of routes, with the local party highly likely to renominate Corbyn if given the option. It is understood he has continued to campaign alongside them, including in the recent local elections.
He is keen to stand again for the party because of the significant local support. One ally said he would “do everything to keep open the option of being Labour candidate”.
Corbyn was originally suspended from the party amid controversy over his remarks made after a critical equalities watchdog report on antisemitism.
His party membership was returned by the NEC after a warning – but Starmer has said the Labour whip in parliament will not be restored until Corbyn gives a fuller apology. Efforts to mediate, including by the former shadow minister Barry Gardiner, have so far been unsuccessful.
Earlier this year, Starmer told the Guardian Corbyn would not have the whip restored while he continued to associate with the Stop the War coalition – the anti-imperialist campaign group of which Corbyn is a deputy president.
Starmer said no one “should be in any doubt” about where Labour stood “on our unshakable support for Nato and on tearing out antisemitism”. He said they were “very clear” requisites for being a Labour MP. “That’s the Labour party I lead.”
A final attempt to restore the whip to Corbyn by leftwing members of the NEC was quashed early this year. “That was the moment the gig is up – he is not going to be the party’s candidate again,” one source close to the NEC said.
Corbyn’s north London constituency – where the MP remains extremely popular – is talked of within the party as being a potential new seat for MPs ousted at the 2019 election from “red wall” seats, including Anna Turley, who lost in Redcar, or the former Wakefield MP Mary Creagh, though neither have expressed public interest in the seat. Creagh is a former leader of Islington council.
One senior Labour source said the choice of an alternative candidate would need to be from the left of the party. “If we have someone parachuted in then I think Jeremy would win the seat, if it’s a genuine grassroots local candidate then we will hold it,” they said.
Any run by Corbyn as an independent against a Labour candidate would probably cause a dilemma for the grassroots leftwing group Momentum, which was the main organising force around his leadership. Many members of the group would be eager to campaign for Corbyn but the organisation would face being proscribed by Labour if he was endorsed.
A spokesperson for Momentum said it would continue to campaign for Corbyn to be readmitted. “Starmer’s ongoing and unjust suspension of Corbyn is a slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of Labour members, and a recipe for electoral failure. Jeremy was reinstated as a Labour member by an NEC panel in line with the party’s processes. Yet Starmer persists with a blatantly factional suspension, as part of his anti-democractic attacks on the Labour left,” they said.
