The Labour Party’s faction fight has gained another combatant this morning: soft-left Ed Miliband is throwing his weight behind Keir Starmer’s plan to block Jeremy Corbyn from standing for the party at the next election. Starmer is set to propose his motion to the NEC at noon, on the grounds that “it is not in the best interests of the Labour Party” to allow his “friend” Jeremy to stand as a candidate partly because he lost so badly in 2019. Not one mention of the antisemitism that festered under Corbyn’s leadership, even though Miliband says this morning that’s exactly why he’s supporting the motion in the first place… 

“Keir Starmer, when he became leader, said he was going to do everything he could to root out antisemitism so we don’t have at the next election what we had at the last, which is Labour and antisemitism being talked about in the same sentence…”

Of course it would be a bit rich of Ed Miliband to support throwing out Corbyn for losing an election. Even so, Corbyn warned “we are not going anywhere” yesterday, with a growing assumption he’ll stand as an independent anyway…