Speaking on GMB this morning, Diane Abbott took a principled stance against Keir Starmer’s chicanery. The former Shadow Home Secretary questioned Starmer’s decision to block Jeremy Corbyn from standing at the next election:

“Keir Starmer put a motion in front of the NEC to bar Jeremy as a candidate, but that motion said nothing about antisemitism. It said that because Jeremy had lost the 2019 election he couldn’t run. Well, really, if you stop people being MPs because they lose elections, why is Ed Miliband still an MP?”

She also claimed that if Corbyn decides to stand as an independent in Islington “he will win”.

Diane’s comments on Ed Miliband come in the context of Labour’s legalistic justification for blocking Corbyn put forward at the NEC – based on his electoral performance and not antisemitism.  Starmer’s motion states that the party’s “standing with the electorate in the country, and its electoral prospects in seats it is required to win in order to secure a parliamentary majority and/or win the next general election, are both significantly diminished should Mr Corbyn be endorsed”.

As Ann Black points out for Labour List, “the motion was fundamentally dishonest, because the reasons given for blocking Corbyn’s candidacy were not the real reasons”. It’s one rule for Comrade Corbyn and another for Red Ed…