A 32-year-old businessman who runs a chain of IVF clinics is among those who could take on Jeremy Corbyn at the next election after Labour banned its former leader from standing for the party again.
Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) approved a motion proposed by Sir Keir Starmer which said that Corbyn’s candidacy would “significantly diminish” the party’s chances of winning the next election given the landslide defeat it suffered under him in 2019.
In a clear measure of Starmer’s control over the party, the motion passed by 22 votes to 12. Corbyn, who remains a party member, is now likely to stand as an independent in Islington North, the constituency he has represented since 1983.
In a statement last night he said: “I will not be intimidated into silence. I have spent my life fighting for a fairer society on behalf of the people of Islington North, and I have no intention of stopping now.” He said that the NEC’s decision was “a shameful attack on party democracy, party members and natural justice.”
While the Labour selection contest is not likely to begin for some months, sources said that potential candidates were already eyeing up the seat. One is understood to be Praful Nargund, an Islington councillor.
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Nargund is chief executive of abc ivf, a chain of 15 clinics that he runs with his mother, Geeta, a gynaecologist.
Nargund’s website says that he is “using my experience to champion policies for a skills revolution for young people” and carries a photo of him with Starmer. He advised Lord Blunkett, the former cabinet minister, on a skills report he prepared for the Labour leader last year.
The prospect of taking on Corbyn is deterring many local contenders from throwing their hats into the ring. Mary Creagh, who briefly stood for the leadership against him in 2015 and was the MP for Wakefield from 2005 to 2019, was reported to be considering an attempt but is instead seeking selection in Coventry North East.
“You would have to have the hide of a rhino to take Jeremy on,” a shadow cabinet minister said. But senior party sources are bullish about their chances of defeating him. “If Jeremy quit and fought a by-election on the single issue of himself then he’d probably win it,” a source said. “But in a general election he will find out that people want a Labour government more than they want him as their MP.”
A shadow cabinet minister said: “As hard as it is for lots of us to realise, people don’t vote for us, they vote for the Labour Party.”
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Corbyn won the seat with a majority of more than 26,000 at the last election.
Yesterday officers of the Islington North party yesterday accused the NEC of “undue interference”, adding: “We believe in the democratic right of all constituency parties to choose their prospective parliamentary candidate.”
Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, told Times Radio that Starmer was “behaving as if he was some kind of Putin of the Labour Party”. But asked if he would support Corbyn as an independent candidate, he said: “No, I certainly wouldn’t. I want to see Keir Starmer elected as prime minister of this country, and we need a Labour government. I don’t think he should stand as an independent. I think it would be a big mistake.”
A spokesman for the Jewish Labour Movement welcomed the NEC’s vote, saying that it “further demonstrates Keir Starmer’s unwavering commitment to zero tolerance on antisemitism and to making the change he has brought permanent, fundamental and irrevocable”.
Nargund did not respond to a request for comment.
