The confusion over whether Diane Abbott will be allowed to stand for the constituency she has represented for more than 37 years comes as Keir Starmer’s team has been accused of seeking to purge the Labour left.
But while Abbott may yet still end up as a Labour candidate – deputy leader Angela Rayner has said her colleague has not been treated “fairly or appropriately” by some Labour colleagues – a spotlight has also fallen on the fate of other leftwing Labour figures.
Denying that there was any purge, Starmer has said the party wants “the highest-quality candidates” to stand.
The party is now selecting its remaining candidates before a meeting of its governing National Executive Committee to endorse them next week, ahead of the 4pm 7 June deadline, by which time nominations from all parties must be withdrawn or submitted to stand in the general election.
Here is what has happened to a range of figures, including those from the Socialist Campaign Group caucus, and Labour members who had been expected to be candidates.
On the outside
Faiza Shaheen
Shaheen’s campaign team has said she has instructed a lawyer after being blocked from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, where she came within 1,262 votes of unseating Iain Duncan Smith during the 2019 general election.
On Thursday, she claimed she had faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”. The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, denied that decisions about Shaheen and others had been made on a factional basis.
Jeremy Corbyn
The man who led Labour from 2015 to 2020 and has represented the party’s stronghold of Islington North since 1983 is to run as an independent. He had the Labour whip removed in November 2020 after insisting that accusations of antisemitism in the party during his leadership had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The former councillor, who had been the MP for Brighton Kemptown since 2017, announced that he had been suspended from the party on Wednesday and would not be allowed to stand for Labour. He said that someone had made what he believed to be a “vexatious and politically motivated complaint” about his behaviour eight years ago.
Sam Tarry
The former shadow minister was deselected as an MP by local Labour members in 2022, meaning he will not stand again in Ilford South. The former trade union official submitted a complaint to the party alleging “vote rigging” in the contest to be selected for the north London seat.
In doubt
Diane Abbott
The first black woman elected to parliament and Britain’s longest-serving black MP says she has been blocked from standing again for Labour in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, a claim denied by Starmer and others on the Labour frontbench.
Apparently safe
Apsana Begum
Britain’s first hijab-wearing MP has previously accused Labour of targeting her as a “socialist, Muslim, working-class woman” and blamed a campaign of targeted harassment locally for a vote to start a full reselection process in her seat. However, she appears to have come through and is now the candidate in Poplar and Limehouse.
Other prominent members of the Labour left, including those from a new generation, are set to return to parliament as candidates in other Labour strongholds.
They include Richard Burgon, Zarah Sultana, Nadia Whittome, Clive Lewis and Olivia Blake. John McDonnell, from an older generation, has been out campaigning on doorsteps and is the candidate in Hayes and Harlington.
