Jeremy Corbyn expelled from Labour and stands as independent candidate

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, will stand as an independent candidate in his north London constituency after he was expelled from the party.

The 74-year-old veteran socialist was first elected as MP for Islington North in 1983 but had the party whip removed in November 2020 after insisting accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party during his leadership had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

Corbyn was leader from 2015 until 2020 and his unapologetically leftwing approach generated enthusiasm among the Labour membership, which nearly tripled to more than half a million during his tenure. Yet many Labour MPs refused to serve as shadow ministers because of his radical views.

In 2019, Corbyn led the party into its most catastrophic general election defeat in nearly a century with the loss of 60 MPs.

In a video post on X on Friday he said: “As your MP, I will continue to be an independent voice for equality, democracy and peace.”

A Labour official confirmed that Corbyn had been expelled from the party. Labour has selected Praful Nargund, a local councillor, to be its candidate for Islington North.

Nargrund describes himself on his website as an “entrepreneur and campaigner” whose has used “innovation to tackle inequalities in fertility treatment”.

Kate Dove, chair of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group, said the local party had wanted Corbyn to stand again as a Labour candidate.

“But [Sir Keir] Starmer and his Westminster clique again denied local people the chance to choose their own candidate and blocked Jeremy,” she said. “Starmer has treated the people of Islington with contempt, setting the stage for a divisive and distracting election campaign.”

Starmer has largely marginalised Labour’s most leftwing MPs since he became leader in 2020, as part of his attempt to move the party to the centre ground of British politics.

He has also imposed a zero-tolerance policy towards antisemitism in the party in the wake of an EHRC report that found Labour had acted unlawfully by failing to tackle the problem under Corbyn’s leadership.

Diane Abbott, a high-profile leftwinger who was shadow home secretary under Corbyn — and who was the first black female MP in Britain — has been suspended since April 2023 after suggesting Jewish people had never been “subject to racism” in a letter to a newspaper. She subsequently apologised, saying the comment was in an “initial draft” that was not meant to have been sent. 

On Friday morning, Starmer said that Labour’s long-running investigation into Abbott would soon be concluded. “We have a cut-off date, I think it is June 4 . . . we have a process in place and we will complete it reasonably soon now,” he told LBC. The Labour leader said the matter was one for the party’s ruling national executive committee rather than himself.

Starmer, meanwhile, blamed the UK’s difficult financial circumstances for his decision to drop several previous Labour policies, such as a plan to scrap tuition fees. 

“I think it’s important just to take a moment to appreciate the damage that has been done to the economy is huge, damage in the last 14 years, particularly by [former Conservative prime minister] Liz Truss,” the Labour leader said in an interview with the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“We have to be clear that we will only make commitments going into the election that we know we can fulfil.”

The Labour leader also confirmed he would roll out his plan to impose 20 per cent VAT on private school fees as soon as possible if his party won the general election on July 4. 

Asked if the policy would be implemented on day one, Starmer replied: “It’s a question of the timetable in parliament. But these first steps are intended to be done straight away.” Labour’s policy would raise an estimated £1.6bn a year, which would be spent on improving Britain’s state schools.