What next for Corbyn after Starmer’s move to ban him from standing as a Labour candidate?

Sean O’Grady on whether the former leader could continue as MP for Islington North

Frenemies: Corbyn and Starmer attend an election campaign meeting in 2019 (Reuters)

Keir Starmer is to propose a motion that will make clear that Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) will not endorse the party’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate at the next election. Corbyn said Starmer had “denigrated the democratic foundations” of the party.

How unusual is this?

Lately we have grown used to Corbyn being a rather marginal figure, and one whose stubbornness over antisemitism in the Labour Party saw the whip removed from him in 2020. Though still a Labour member, he sits as an independent and takes no formal part in the organisation of the party in parliament. Now he may find himself deprived of the seat he has held for Labour since 1983.

For a former party leader who is popular among the membership, fought two general elections, and almost got Labour into government in 2017, it is an astonishing moment and virtually unprecedented in any party. You have to go back to the treachery of James Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 to see a political dressing down of this kind. As prime minister of a minority Labour government engulfed by a financial crisis, and confronted with a divided cabinet and party, MacDonald felt he had no option but to team with the Conservatives and Liberals to form a “National Government” under his premiership. It was meant to be a short-term measure and he hoped to return, but he was expelled from the party; he held his seat with Tory support, but his name became a byword for betrayal, and his ghost has haunted many a senior Labour figure since.

Corbyn committed no such treason; his only real mistakes were in strategy and policy, and his refusal to face up to the implications of the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation into antisemitism.

Will it help Starmer to win the election?

This is as much about Starmer as it is about Corbyn, and it certainly weakens the Conservative jibes about Starmer having campaigned for a Corbyn-led party in 2017 and 2019. With Corbyn relegated so far that he can’t even stand as a Labour candidate, alongside the tilt towards New Labour-type policies, the claim that Labour is dominated by socialists or communists becomes implausible. Boris Johnson found in Corbyn a useful bogeyman at the 2019 election; Rishi Sunak won’t have quite as much luck.

From the point of view of the current leader’s profile, taking radical action against such a prominent figure on the left will not only enhance Starmer’s centrist credentials; it will also take the edge off his wishy-washy public image. He will look unsentimental, ruthless, and determined to let nothing prevent a Labour victory. His allies may like to draw a contrast between the way he dealt with Corbyn and how Sunak has to put up with the continuing embarrassments inflicted on the Conservatives by Johnson and Liz Truss.

How has the left responded?

Left-leaning figures in the party are naturally upset. But the likes of Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana and Richard Burgon are not the force they once were. At this distance it feels as though the Corbyn leadership, like that of Michael Foot before it (1980-83), was an eccentric aberration; an opportunity to relearn some old lessons about the importance of the centre in British electoral politics. Corbyn and Corbynism, like the Trump wave, the Brexit referendum and the rise of Johnson, were supposed to herald a new populist reassignment of politics, but older patterns of party loyalty seem to be re-establishing themselves.

Can his youthful fan base save him?

Unfortunately for Corbyn, the Momentum movement doesn’t seem to be that motivated to launch a rescue campaign. This is all the more remarkable given that so many of its members joined Momentum and the Labour Party to get Corbyn elected as leader in 2015, and then supported him through the difficult years that followed.

Perhaps Corbyn’s lukewarm support for Remain in the Brexit referendum compromised their enthusiasm for “Magic Grandpa”, as critics called him. Corbyn’s distaste for the EU as a bosses’ club and an impediment to socialist government in Britain was too well established to be camouflaged: he had voted against EC membership back in 1975, and was a long-term disciple of Tony Benn, the leading voice on the left against what was then the common market.

If Corbyn does stand as an independent, can he win?

It is conceivable, but the precedents aren’t encouraging. Where Labour incumbents have fallen out with their party and then stood at a general election as independents (as opposed to joining a breakaway group such as the SDP or Change UK), they have sometimes won – but even then only narrowly, and none have survived for long.

Something similar happened in 1983, when Corbyn first won his seat as the official Labour candidate. His predecessor, Michael O’Halloran, was a long-standing Labour MP who had defected to the SDP in 1981 but failed to be selected as its official candidate for the constituency, and therefore stood as an independent. In this three-way scrap for the centre-left vote, Corbyn won handsomely.

Corbyn is different from most incumbents who stand as “independent Labour” candidates, because of his obviously high profile, the enthusiasm and affection he generates on the left, his length of service, and the sheer size of the Labour vote in Islington North, which means there is no chance of letting a Tory or Liberal Democrat in. It’s going to be a Corbyn vs Starmer battle, at least for the soul of the local party.

However, those Labourites thinking of spending time canvassing for Corbyn in north London should be aware that they could be expelled for doing so, as indeed would Corbyn for running against an approved Labour candidate. If the NEC was minded to, it might even throw him out just for announcing his prospective independent candidacy.

What would Corbyn actually do if he made it back to the Commons? The only way he could wield much power would be if there was a hung parliament, or if Labour had a small majority. In that scenario, the left would play the same sort of role as the European Research Group plays in the Tory party (as it did during the Callaghan government in the 1970s). Needless to say, this is not an attractive prospect for Starmer, and the spectre of it will be used by the Tories; Corbyn the bogeyman might make a bit of a comeback.