Labor Party bans ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn from MP candidacy
Dhe British Labor Party allows its former leader Jeremy Corbyn no more MP candidacy. The British news agency PA reported on Tuesday, citing the responsible party committee. The party leadership thus granted a request from the current chairman Keir Starmer.
The background is the devastating election defeat in which Corbyn led the party in 2019. Labor then had a large part of its traditional strongholds in the north of England to the ex-Prime Minister’s Conservatives Boris Johnson lost.
Starmer Corbyn had also been excluded from the group three years ago because of his handling of anti-Semitism. Corbyn is accused of not taking decisive action against anti-Semitic tendencies in the party during his time as party leader from 2015 to 2020. Several Jewish Labor MPs resigned from the party at the time in protest. Corbyn always denied the allegations, but was also suspected of having an anti-Semitic world view.
Critics, however, accuse Starmer of wanting to get the old leftist Corbyn out of the way in order to win the party’s dispute over direction. Starmer is centre-left and has a good chance of becoming the next British prime minister after the general election expected next year.
Corbyn, 73, has been a Labor Party representative in the House of Commons for the Islington North constituency since 1983. A new candidacy is now only open to him outside Labour.
