Corbyn to begin High Court bid to overturn suspension

Jeremy Corbyn will next week begin his High Court attempt to overturn his suspension from the parliamentary Labour Party.

A pre-action application hearing is scheduled to take place on Monday afternoon, according to reports.

Lawyers for the former leader are expected to ask the judge to grant the disclosure of evidence relating to the decision to suspend the former leader  following his response to the damning report into antisemitism in Labour published last October.

Lawyers for Mr Corbyn are expected to ask to see evidence of the negotiations within Sir Keir Starmer’s office ahead of the decision to suspend him.

The JC understands they are also expected to request access to a record of the online National Executive Committee  disciplinary panel meeting that approved the decision to drop Mr Corbyn’s suspension from the party after only 19 days.

Following uproar from antisemitism campaigners and some Labour MPs, Sir Keir removed the party whip from Mr Corbyn.

Mr Corbyn was suspended from Labour on October 29  for claiming on Facebook  that the scale of antisemitism in the party was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.

He later attempted to clarify his comments in a statement to the party, saying concerns about antisemitism were “neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated’”.

But he failed to apologise fully for his comments – and the original Facebook statement has not been taken down.

Sir Keir has said he would keep the decision not to restore the whip to Mr Corbyn  “under review”.