Jeremy Corbyn should not be allowed to return as a Labour MP, Wes Streeting said today.
The shadow health secretary bluntly shut down a question about whether Corbyn should have the whip restored.
The former Labour leader sits in the Commons as an independent MP over his response to an investigation into anti-Semitism in the party.
Corbyn said there was a problem with anti-Jewish racism in the party but the scale of it had been “dramatically overstated” by his political opponents and sections of the media.
Labour has said it will not restore the whip unless Corbyn apologises and retracts his comments.
Asked about restoring the whip, Streeting told Sky News at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool: “No, I don’t think he should.”
It comes after an attempt to pave the way for Corbyn to stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election was defeated.
Some party delegates forced a vote on a proposed rule change in a bid to allow the Islington North MP to be re-selected as a Labour candidate.
Supporters said it was focused on allowing a constituency Labour party (CLP) to be in control of who their candidate is rather than the parliamentary Labour party (PLP).
But the party believed the proposal represented a “significant legal risk” to it. The proposal was rejected by 40.84 per cent to 59.16 per cent.
Labour leader Keir Starmer will put further distance between himself and his predecessor Corbyn during his speech on Tuesday.
He is expected to echo Tony Blair by declaring that the party is now “back as the political wing of the British people”.
He will use his keynote address to insist Labour is now “the party of the centre-ground” in British politics.
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