Veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn has promised to be a thorn in the side of Keir Starmer’s incoming government after winning his parliamentary seat by beating the candidate of the Labour Party he used to lead.
Corbyn resigned as Labour leader in 2019 after losing to Boris Johnson in the Labour party’s worst election defeat since 1935. Starmer threw him out of the parliamentary party less than a year later, accusing him of undermining efforts to tackle antisemitism.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks during a protest, outside the gates of Downing Street in 2022.Credit: AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali
In a bitterly contested vote in Corbyn’s north London constituency of Islington North, which he has represented since 1983, he hung on to the seat, defeating Labour candidate Praful Nargund by 24,120 votes to 16,873.
“This result is to me a resounding message from the people of Islington that they want something different, they want something better,” Corbyn said.
An ardent pro-Palestinian activist, Corbyn said that the people who voted for him were “looking for a government that on the world stage would search for peace, not war, and not allow the terrible conditions to go on in Gaza at the present time”.
In a sign of how Labour’s approach to the war in Gaza has lost them support in some areas, another independent candidate who had been endorsed by Corbyn, Shockat Adam, beat prominent Labour figure Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South.
Reuters