From Labour leader to independent, Jeremy Corbyn vows to work in the UK and Europe for a ceasefire in Gaza

Rises and falls are all part and parcel of the life of many a political figure, often in numerous occurrences and often at the hands of forces too big to be beaten. Jeremy Corbyn is no exception to that rule. Having served as leader of the UK’s Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, to being exiled from that very same party, he now stands as an independent candidate for his parliamentary seat of Islington North.

The former prime ministerial candidate, if anything, is known for his adherence to certain principles – long-held over many decades but untested by national leadership – which include proclamations of justice, accountability, security reformation, and an opposition to war and conflict.

Speaking to Middle East Monitor, Corbyn recalled his avid involvement in local politics from an early age, having first become active in his school years over issues such as the Vietnam war and environmental sustainability, as well due to an interest in tackling injustice, poverty, and discrimination.

He then worked as a trade union organiser in London in his twenties, before becoming a councillor and then an MP for Islington North in 1983. With his worldview and interest in history having been significantly influenced by his early years in the Caribbean, he stated that his decades representing his local community have “been a learning journey, learning from people from all over the world who’ve made their homes here and trying to speak up for them in parliament”.

Corbyn stressed that “I hate war and the violence that goes with it, so I started life campaigning against the Vietnam war”, highlighting his advocacy for justice and his anti-colonial stance as prominent focal points in his political mission. “It’s also about global solidarity, and I have always spoken up on issues such as apartheid in South Africa, the cause of the Palestinian people, and the cause of people which are denied representation around the world”.

Having been a member of the Labour Party since the age of 16, in which he held multiple roles and positions throughout the decades, his leadership and candidacy for prime minister of the UK – after the defeats in the 2017 and 2019 elections – ended in 2020 when he stepped down, and culminated in his brief suspension from the party that same year over his interpretation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

He was reinstated three years later, and “that could and should have been the end of the matter”, but the party’s new leader Keir Starmer “decided I should be suspended from the parliamentary party and that dispute has gone on ever since.”

An independent focus on the constituency’s challenges

The new Labour then debarred from being a candidate in this year’s upcoming general election, to take place on July 4, as well as debarring Islington North “from selecting anybody else, or even having a chance to choose me, if that’s what they wanted to do. Then when they tried to impose a candidate I attempted to put my name forward they denied it and tol

d me the rules of natural justice did not apply to the Labour Party”.

Now running as an independent candidate to maintain his seat as the constituency’s MP, he said his campaign has been “getting wonderful levels of support and enthusiasm from volunteers” and from the wider community. That campaign “is not about me”, Corbyn insisted. “It’s about the issues. It’s about peace, it’s about justice, it’s about social justice and equality in Britain”.

With his own community and constituency at the forefront of his campaign, he said that Islington North “contains all the problems and joys of modern British society. It’s a diverse community, there are 70 different languages spoken in the constituency. It has, sadly, over 40 percent of our children living in degrees of poverty within society”, in addition to “some very rich people living in very big houses in certain parts of the constituency”.

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Amongst the main issues facing that community are “poverty and housing”, Corbyn said, highlighting the high mortgages, rent increases, low security of tenure, and bad energy efficiency that many in the constituency have suffered, despite the council’s best efforts to tackle such challenges. The high numbers of rough sleepers and homeless people are also a constant issue, he said, as elsewhere in the British capital.

Securing peace in the Middle East

Saying he is “passionate about the cause of peace in the Middle East”, Corbyn recounted that “I’ve been nine times to Palestine, to Israel, to the refugee camps, and all of the neighbouring countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and so on.” Those trips have been a key factor in his long-held stance on the urgency of a resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the failure of which has led to the current ongoing Israeli offensive on Gaza and the destruction of the Strip, now entering its tenth month. “I’m just horrified, every day, as more horror stories of what went on and is going on now in Gaza on top of the events of October 7, and so I’m campaigning on that.”

His plan to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, if re-elected, would include “working with colleagues in parliament”, which would reportedly be a continuation of his efforts during his past term. “For the whole of the last parliament, I’ve been a member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe… and I’ve constantly raised the issues of Gaza there. I will continue that work at the European level”.

He insisted that he would also continue to raise his voice at pro-Palestine demonstrations, as well as to further work with allies from various other parties in the UK “to demand an immediate and complete ceasefire, but above all, recognition of the State of Palestine”.

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A key factor facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza which Corbyn particularly highlighted, however, is the UK’s own complicity in supplying arms and military assistance to Tel Aviv. He plans to use “the platform in parliament to expose the arms trade, British military participation, the use of RAF Akrotiri [the British airbase in Cyprus], the supply of arms from this country to Israel, and also, of course, legal issues.” Corby insisted that “I won’t stop until we get a ceasefire, until we get justice for the Palestinian people”.

If he is re-elected back into parliament, he said, “I will be working with anyone in parliament that agrees with the need for immediate recognition [of Palestinian statehood], which would in turn encourage a peace process.” Recalling the recent recognition of Palestine by Ireland, Norway, and Spain, Corbyn stated that such a step was “very important, because having a significant bloc of European Union member states recognising Palestine makes it much harder for the other countries not to do so. The biggest stumbling blocks are Britain, France, and Germany at the present time”.

Labour’s fall from Palestine’s grace

With regards to any possibility of the Labour Party – as well as its leader Keir Starmer – reforming its stance on the Gaza conflict and recognising Palestinian statehood, Corbyn said “I would like to be optimistic and say they will”, but he reserves doubts that would be the case due to the party’s stance that recognition of the State of Palestine is part of a peace process. “No, it has to be an unconditional and immediate recognition of the state of Palestine”, he stressed. “The vast majority of the world’s nations have done that, in some cases many years ago.”

Throughout the past year, Labour’s weak stance on the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and its reluctance to recognise Palestine has disappointed many long-time members and supporters of the party, disillusioning them and leading significant voter blocs to refuse further support for Labour in this election.

“It’s done enormous damage to the Labour standing”, Corbyn stated, lamenting that the party has ridden back from its pro-Palestinian stance when he held the leadership. “They are wrong. They’re wrong to put caveats on it [Palestinian statehood] and they’re wrong to…not to recognise in any sense that it is always completely illegal to deny people access to water, power, food, and medicine. Those are war crimes if you deny people those things.”

Emphasising the need for “real security” in international relations, which include rights to food, clean water, and other necessities, Corbyn said that “the issues facing this planet are inequality, poverty, environmental disaster, are the wars created in the greed of trying to get minerals”.

He further added that “real security comes in this world if you have food, you have education, you have a health service, and you have clean air and a clean environment. Those are the issues that we have to be concentrating on, not encouraging more wars by the development of the arms trade, and ensuring that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means what it says, and children don’t get bombed in Gaza, in Yemen, in the Congo, or anywhere else in this world.”

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