LONDON (Bywire News) - The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a blistering rebuke to his successor Keir Starmer - branding the current Labour leader as "weak" for attempting to blame the party's electoral woes on him.
In a wide-ranging interview with a new ITV podcast, the Islington North MP said it was "a bit rich" for Keir Starmer "to dump" responsibility for Labour's recent defeat in the Hartlepool by-election, and for the party's disastrous Local Election results, at his doorstep:
"I'm big and I'm grown up, and I don't particularly care about what people say, but I think it's a bit rich to start blaming me for stuff that's been done over the past year that I've had absolutely no part of whatsoever,
"I do think that dumping on somebody because they're not there anymore is a bit weak, really."
You can watch Corbyn's comments in the tweet below:
EXCL: @JeremyCorbyn is not pulling any punches – he says it’s a “bit rich” and “weak” from Keir Starmer to blame him for Labour’s poor election results.
— Shehab Khan (@ShehabKhan) May 12, 2021
He also adds that the recent reshuffle was a “knee-jerk reaction in order to create different headlines”. pic.twitter.com/K6KWtJl61z
Mr Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP after being controversially suspended from the Labour Party, refused to take any responsibility for the party's recent election defeats - and instead said that the party's poor position was due to Keir Starmer's 'bizarre' decision to ditch the party's domestic policies:
"Do I take responsibility for it? No."
"[...] We had a set of popular policies in the last manifesto - green industrial revolution, investment in the economy, equality legislation, national education service - as a party, ditching all of that, we'll be in an even worse position.
"People didn't feel confident in what the policy offer was, and rather bizarrely, the leadership launched the local election campaign on the basis of national policies. Whereas, of course, it's a local election."
The Islington North MP also said that Starmer's peculiarly agreeable stance towards the government also probably didn't help matters, stating:
"But I think there's the feeling that Labour had done too much agreeing with the government when many people's experience of Covid is one of fear. We ended up being seen as a party that basically agreed with the whole government strategy."
You can watch Corbyn's further comments in the tweet below:
In a wide-ranging interview for the @ITVNews Calling Peston podcast Mr Corbyn says there was a feeling that Labour had "done too much agreeing with the government" during the pandemic.
— Shehab Khan (@ShehabKhan) May 12, 2021
He highlights things, like furlough not being strong enough, that he would have opposed. pic.twitter.com/9GgFDvIy7H
In addition, Mr Corbyn also indicated his belief that Labour's ongoing lurch to the right under Keir Starmer would ultimately prove unsuccessful:
"There's no way for Labour that moves to the centre or to the right.
"There has to be that position where you have a credible socialist-inspired program that I think people can come to. We had 600,000 members in December 2019. I don't think we have so many now."
Elsewhere during the interview, the former Labour leader also took aim at the UK media, who he said "monstered" both him and other left-wing Labour figures "in a quite extraordinary way" during his tenure at the helm of the party:
“The mainstream media has monstered me for the past five years; monstered me and John McDonnell and Diane Abbott and others in a quite extraordinary way.
“We've had even more abuse than Arthur Scargill had and he led the miners' strike.
“Now, I'm grown up. I'm descendants of a rhinoceros - my skin is very thick. I don't really care what people say about me.”
The former Labour leader remains a Labour Party member after his suspension, but has not been reinstated as a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party - and he ruled our a legal challenge to the situation, stating:
"I want this to be a political decision, not a legal decision.
"I am a member of the Labour party, which I have been ever since 1966.
"As far as I'm concerned, I should be restored to full membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and that by the way, is what very large numbers of Labour party members also think, and absolutely what Islington North constituency Labour Party thinks, which is perhaps quite important since I am the MP for Islington North."
Keir Starmer's Labour party lost last week's Harlepool by-election in catastrophic fashion - with the party plummeting from a 3,500 majority to more than 7,000 votes behind the Conservatives, and losing a full 10 points in terms of vote share since their 2019 victory in the constituency under Corbyn.
Labour also lost out badly in the Local Elections - which were held on the same day - shedding 326 Councillors and losing control of 8 councils across the country.
Many Labour figures close to Mr Starmer have directly blamed Mr Corbyn for the party's current position, whilst the current Labour leader has repeatedly attempted to excuse the party's poor results by claiming it was always going to take more than a year to rebuild it following the Islington North MP's tenure.
[Writing by Tom D. Rogers, editing by Jessica Miller]