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Labor has begun shortlisting candidates for Jeremy Corbyn’s seat in Islington North, with a contender for the seat expected to be confirmed by June 1.
Corbyn, who is still suspended for comments he made after the Equality body’s report on anti-Semitism in Labor, he is barred from running for the party again. He won the seat with a majority of more than 26,000 in 2019.
The former Labor leader is likely to run as an independent candidate in the place he has held for more than 40 years. Labor said local members would not be involved in the selection of candidates, which would be decided by the party’s ruling national executive committee.
Applications will close on Monday, with shortlisting taking place in the coming days. Postal and online voting will take place next weekend with online voting on May 29. The final result will be announced on June 1.
Although the party is expected to impose a shortlist of candidates on the local electoral party, members will then have to decide. There was considerable anger in the electoral party over Corbyn’s expulsion, with many members still loyal to him.
Senior figures said the party had recognized they would need a local candidate to defeat the former Labor leader.
They added that there were several “strong contenders” for the seat, believed to include Islington councilor Praful Nargund, who runs a chain of IVF clinics, and transport campaigner Christian Vollmar, who was the Labor candidate in Richmond .
An outside contender for the seat is journalist Paul Mason.
Corbyn could try to stand as a candidate for the seat, although he would be blocked at the selection stage by the NEC.
Grassroots group Momentum, which backed Corbyn’s leadership, said: “Jeremy Corbyn has loyally represented the people of Islington North for over 40 years and has remained a member of the Labor Party for over 50 years. His own local party voted unanimously to express their support for Jeremy and assert their right to elect their own candidate for Parliament.
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“Labour members in Islington North need to decide whether they want Jeremy to continue to be their Labor candidate and not Keir Starmer’s Westminster clique.” Democracy demands it.”
Corbyn was officially ruled out of the running again by a motion approved by the NEC in March last year, saying his candidacy would “significantly reduce” Labour’s chance of “winning the next general election”.
The MP, who led the party to a heavy defeat in 2019, has been suspended from the party by Keir Starmer after he said anti-Semitism in the party had been “dramatically overstated” by critics of his leadership and Labour. The NEC readmitted Corbyn to the party, but Starmer refused to hand back the whip to Labour.
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