It’s time for Keir Starmer to restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn

The more time that passes before Corbyn has the whip restored, the longer it will take for healing within the Labour Party to take place, writes Harriet Williamson

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Getty)

It’s been just over seven months since the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, suspended his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn from the party in late October 2020 for his views on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s report into antisemitism.

Despite reinstating Corbyn as a party member on 17 November 2020, Starmer withdrew the whip from the former leader a day later, saying that he would “keep this situation under review”. It was reported that Corbyn would have the whip removed for three months, pending an investigation into whether he had broken the parliamentary Labour Party code of conduct.

Those three months have long passed. There has been no definitive reporting on the outcome of an investigation.

Labour members have left the party in droves. In the seven months between Starmer’s election in April 2020 and November, about 10 per cent of members quit the party, a fall in numbers of almost 57,000 people. The decision in October to suspend Corbyn resulted in a damaging backlash, with left-wing members energised by Corbyn’s leadership and vision for a fairer Britain deciding to cut up their membership cards.

By continuing to withhold the whip from Corbyn, Starmer is entrenching division in Labour. It no longer feels like a place for people who share Corbyn’s values of eradicating poverty and inequality, and creating a country for the many, not the few. Factionalism abounds and it seems clear to many that Starmer’s purpose is to purge the party of left-leaning elements, rather than holding the Tory government to account.

The situation has been kept “under review” for long enough. Members of the Labour Party, particularly those of the young and left-leaning variety, feel extremely let down and alienated by Starmer’s decision. The more time that passes before Corbyn has the whip restored, the longer it will take for healing within the party to take place.

A house divided cannot stand, and the Labour Party doesn’t seem to know what it stands for under Starmer’s leadership.

Corbyn gave so many people, including this editor, renewed faith in politics and allowed hope to flourish for a Britain that functions in service of ordinary people, not the wealthy or the powerful. It’s time he had the whip restored. In fact, it’s long overdue.

Yours,

Harriet Williamson

Voices freelance commissioning editor