Controversial political figure Jeremy Corbyn defeats former party Labour to win parliament seat

Jeremy Corbyn won back his parliamentary seat, beating the candidate of the Labour Party he used to lead, and promising to be a thorn in the side of newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new government after an acrimonious falling out with his successor.

Corbyn resigned as Labour leader in 2019 after the party suffered its worst election defeat since 1935, and Starmer threw him out of the parliamentary party less than a year later, accusing him of undermining efforts to tackle antisemitism.

Starmer often cites Corbyn’s exclusion from Labour ranks in parliament as a sign of how he has steered the party towards center ground.

However, 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.

As an ardent pro-Palestinian activist, Corbyn said that the people who voted for him were “looking for a government that, on the world stage, will search for peace, not war, and not allow the terrible conditions to go on in Gaza at the present time.”

Even though Labour won the most seats in a landslide, the party lost a total of four seats to pro-Palestinian independent candidates over the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. These losses all occurred in constituencies with a large number of Muslim residents, it claimed.

Both the ruling Conservatives and the resurgent Labour Party have said that they wanted the fighting in Gaza to end but that they have also backed Israel’s right to defend itself, thereby angering some among the 3.9 million Muslims who make up 6.5% of Britain’s population.

In a sign of how Labour’s approach to the war in Gaza has lost support in some areas, another independent candidate who had been endorsed by Corbyn, Shockat Adam, beat prominent Labour figure Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South.

The Muslim Vote campaign called on voters to pick pro-Palestine candidates running as independents or from smaller parties like the left-wing Workers Party, which put up over 150 candidates. There were 230 more independent candidates than at the last election in 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn and his 'friends' in Hamas

Corbyn’s campaign has frequently referenced his pro-Palestinian stance in relation to the Israel-Hamas war, even at times issuing statements seemingly blaming Israel for the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

For instance, shortly before ballots closed, Corbyn tweeted on X, “You have less than one hour to make your voice heard. To stand up for a fully public NHS. To oppose the genocide in Gaza. To fight for a real alternative to poverty and inequality. Be part of history in Islington North. Vote Independent.”

Further, only five days after the October 7 massacre, Corbyn wrote on X that “we should condemn the targeting of all civilian life, no matter who does it. Why can’t our politicians uphold this basic moral principle and defend international law universally and equally? How many innocent Palestinian lives should be erased in the name of self-defense?”

We should condemn the targeting of all civilian life, no matter who does it.Why can't our politicians uphold this basic moral principle, and defend international law universally and equally? How many innocent Palestinian lives should be erased in the name of self-defence?

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 12, 2023

On October 9, only two days after the massacre, the controversial politician appeared on the Piers Morgan show where he repeatedly refused to define Hamas as a terrorist organization - despite the UK proscribing it as such.

In the heated discussion, Morgan can be heard repeatedly asking Corbyn, "Can you call them a terrorist group, Jeremy?" In response, Corbyn avoids the question and asks "Is it possible to have a rational discussion with you?"

Piers Morgan asks Jeremy Corbyn 15 times whether the former Labour leader thinks Hamas is a terror group.Jeremy Corbyn refuses to answer.@piersmorgan | @jeremycorbyn pic.twitter.com/F9kr1OLtj1

— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) November 13, 2023

This line of questioning followed previous statements made by Corbyn in which he described Hamas as “friends” – a statement that he later claimed to regret.

After refusing to condemn Hamas throughout October, in a November piece for Tribute Magazine, he eventually admitted that the group that is still holding some 120 people captive, is, in fact, a terrorist organization. However, he added that he believed that the IDF was also a terrorist group and did not show the same hesitation that he did in regard to Hamas when condemning the IDF as such.

In the article, Corbyn wrote of the suffering that Palestinian civilians in Gaza are experiencing. He attributed this to the ongoing conflict but failed, for example, to mention that Hamas was withholding resources that could reduce the level of this distress.

Corbyn later goes on to say that “if we understand terrorism to describe the indiscriminate killing of civilians in breach of international law, then, of course, Hamas is a terrorist group,” adding that “the targeting of hospitals, refugee camps, and so-called safe zones by the Israeli army are acts of terror too; and the killing of more than 11,000 people, half of whom are children, cannot possibly be understood as acts of self-defense.”