British opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed that his left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn is banned from standing as a Labour Party candidate.
The Labour leader was speaking at a press conference on Wednesday to mark the end of the party's two-year period of monitoring by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) over allegations that it failed to deal with anti-Semitism in its ranks.
Reporters asked whether Corbyn would be allowed to defend the Islington North seat he has held since 1983 as a Labour candidate.
"Let me be very clear about that. Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the general election as a Labour Party candidate," Starmer said.
"What I said about the party changing, I meant that. We are not going back," he added. "And that is why Jeremy Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election."
Starmer said the end of the EHRC oversight period was an "important moment in the history of the Labour Party" which had taken "many, many months of hard work and humility."
A motion at the annual Labour conference in Liverpool last September to allow the Islington North party branch to re-select him was defeated by 59 per cent of the vote to 41. An earlier attempt by left-wing members of the party's National Executive Committee to have him reinstated was also defeated.
The party has launched a purge of other left-wingers since Corbyn's suspension.
Starmer ordered Corbyn suspended from Labour and to have the whip withdrawn over his statement in response to the EHRC report in October 2020.
"The scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents," Corbyn said at the time, while also condemning anti-Semitism and racism. He later apologised for the comments.
A separate report into the row by barrister Martin Forde KC accused right and left factions in Labour of "weaponizing" anti-Semitism accusations against each other.