Labour has announced whether its sitting MPs will step down or fight again at the next election in nearly every single constituency. By a weird coincidence, it stays silent about the one constituency Labour party members and the wider public are most interested in: Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North.
Sir Keir Starmer withdrew the whip from Corbyn because of the ex-leader’s response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission report on anti-Jewish racism in the Labour party. Rather than, for example, apologising for prejudice on his watch, Corbyn insisted that antisemitism had been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’ by his opponents.
They’re not frightened of Jeremy Corbyn the man. They’re frightened of his followers
Starmer said in December that ‘he doesn’t see the circumstances’ in which Labour will allow its former leader to stand as its candidate.
If that were the end of it, ambitious politicians would be lining up to fight for the Islington North Labour nomination. However catastrophically he performed in the rest of the UK, Corbyn secured a personal majority of 26,188 at the 2019 election. Islington North is the safest of Labour constituencies. An unassailable stronghold and a job for life.
No queue is forming, however. When I interviewed Labour figures in Islington, only one, Christian Wolmar, was willing to say in public that he wanted the nomination.
Wolmar is a transport journalist, author and a widely-praised authority on the failures of rail and bus privatisation. He’s a local candidate with deep experience of Labour politics, and a man of the left, who in his own words ‘will offer myself as Corbyn without the baggage’.
For now, he has the field to himself, and will carry on having the field to himself for a good while yet. If Corbyn stands as an independent, Labour people are frightened of running against him.
They’re not frightened of Jeremy Corbyn the man. They’re frightened of his followers, who would flood the constituency with Corbyn campaign workers in an election and flood his Labour opponent’s Twitter feed with abuse.
One prominent local figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a Corbyn supporter had threatened that ‘I would deserve everything I got if I ran against Jeremy’. Their partner and children said they should not put them through it. The nastiness would not be over when the election was over: ‘We’d have to live in the constituency afterwards and there would be bitter recriminations.’
The local party is about 4,000-strong. Judging its mood is difficult because meetings remain on Zoom and informal chats to sound out opinions are hard to arrange. But internal party elections for constituency officers show strong support for pro-Corbyn candidates. In normal circumstances, the leader of Islington Council, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, might consider a run herself. For now, she describes Corbyn as a ‘fantastic local MP’ and backs the calls to allow him to stand for Labour again.
Islington Labour could split into pro- and anti-Corbyn parties if Starmer forces Corbyn to stand as an independent.
He will surely refuse to back down. Starmer knows that nothing would revive the prone body of this moribund government faster than readmitting Corbyn to the fold.
Most people in Islington Labour assume that the national party will wait until as late as possible before ruling Corbyn out and imposing a new candidate. His supporters will go wild, the thinking goes. But their protests will soon be lost in the noise of a general election campaign.
Interviewed by Robert Peston this week, Jeremy Corbyn refused to answer ‘hypothetical’ questions about whether he would stand as an independent. Obviously, he wants to be the Labour candidate, and not just because his victory would be guaranteed.
‘I joined the Labour party since before the England men’s team won the World Cup. I’ve spent my life in the Labour party. I’ve done every job there is in Labour.’
Deselect him and you deselect a 73-year old’s whole life and legacy.
Maybe even Corbyn does not know whether he will run as an independent. If he does, questions that resonate far beyond north London will be settled.
If there ever is to be a viable party to the left of Labour, Islington is where it could be born. The cliched media picture of the borough as a home to trendy lefties is decades out of date. A ribbon of gentrified housing runs from Highbury, near Arsenal’s stadium, through the centre of the borough to Clerkenwell and the City. When I moved there in the early 1990s, young middle-class people could afford to buy their first flat – ‘tell the young people of today that, and they won’t believe you,’ as Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen say.
Now only the fortunate few, with family money or jobs in the City, move in. The second-hand bookshops and offices for worthy campaign groups have been replaced by Farrow & Ball paint shops and Ottolenghi restaurants.
Out of sight, the rest of the borough has staggering levels of poverty. It is also hyper-diverse. Whatever you may think of his politics, Jeremy Corbyn is a hardworking constituency MP, and is at home in the deprived, multi-cultural streets of inner-London. Notice how naturally he referred to ‘the England men’s team’ winning in 1966. Not even Gary Lineker adapts to changing social mores as quickly and as easily as that.
I have no doubt that, if Labour were in charge today, and suffering the inevitable unpopularity power brings, he would beat the official Labour candidate at the next election – just as Ken Livingstone beat Frank Dobson, when he ran as an independent leftist for London mayor in 2000.
But today’s political circumstances could not be more different. The general election of 2024/25 could rank alongside 1906, 1945 and 1997: a moment when the country turns on the Conservatives as if they were an occupying army of a foreign power. In by-elections, you can see voters searching for creative ways to defeat them. If that means Labour and Green supporters voting Liberal Democrat, they will do it. If that means Lib Dems and Greens voting Labour, they will do that too. Nothing stands in the way of the aching imperative to chuck the Tories out. As far as most centre-left people are concerned, Starmer can do whatever it takes to remove the Conservatives from power.
If that feeling lasts, even an independent left candidate as famous as Jeremy Corbyn will have a hard time persuading his supporters to oppose Labour.
Islington North usually declares between 2am and 3am on election night. If the official Labour candidate wins comfortably, you will know we are on course for a Labour majority – perhaps a Labour landslide. If Corbyn wins, you will know that the opposition vote is still splintering and reports of the Conservative party’s death are premature.
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