Labour frontbencher backs Lisa Forbes

For the past two years Sir Keir Starmer has done his damnedest to distance Labour from the Jeremy Corbyn years. He’s stripped his predecessor of the whip, purged his party of many of his supporters and shifted Labour policy across a swathe of issues. Starmer even mocked Boris Johnson at the despatch box this week as the ‘Conservative Corbyn’; hardly the treatment you might expect of a ‘friend’ as Sir Keir once described Jezza.

So there will no doubt be consternation at Labour HQ in Southside at news that Corbyn-era MP Lisa Forbes now intends to make a comeback. Mr S was the first to bring news last month that Forbes was eyeing up a return in Peterborough which she won in a by-election in June 2019 but then lost six months later in the general.  She famously sparked demands for her to lose the Labour whip before, er, she had even taken her seat in Westminster.