The Labour Party has announced Praful Nargund will be the party’s candidate for Islington North

Islington councillor Praful Nargund will be the party’s candidate for Islington North, where he will stand against Mr Corbyn, who will run as an independent.

The Barnsbury ward councillor was first elected in May 2022 and has served on licensing committees and the health, wellbeing and adult social care scrutiny committee.

Mr Nargund said: “It’s an honour to have been chosen as Labour’s candidate for Islington North and I look forward to the campaign ahead. I promise to be a truly local MP, that represents all families and businesses that call this special place their home.

“A vote for Labour is a vote for getting Britain building again to drive growth, to switch on GB Energy to lower bills, take back our streets with 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs, make our NHS fit for the future, to break down barriers to opportunity for every child with mental health support and free breakfast clubs, and a long-term plan to rebuild Britain.”

He was shortlisted against Sem Moema, a member of the London Assembly, after seven candidates put themselves forward.

Others who failed to make the shortlist included former BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason, transport writer Christian Wolmar, Enfield councillor Margaret Greer, who was backed by the Unison union, economist Shreya Nanda and businessman Harry Spencer.
The contest took place after the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) decided to bar current MP Jeremy Corbyn from standing for Labour again.
Mr Corbyn has  confirmed he would be standing as an independent in the General Election on July 4, leading to his expulsion from the party

Bradford-born Nargund, who moved to Islington in 2015 and was first elected to Islington Council in 2022, told his audience at an event that his parents, who were at the event, had moved to Britain from India in the early 1980s to work as National Health Service junior doctors, initially under Conservative national governments.

He described them seeing a transforming of the service after Labour won in 1997: “Record investment, better outcomes for patients, better pay, better working conditions. We saw how much better a fairer Britain can be.” Nargund said this experience prompted his mother to join the Labour Party, resulting in him spending “evenings and weekends on the doorstep with her”.

Challenging the “caricature” of Islington as “a place of privilege” he said poverty characterised the experience of a community to which Conservative governments have been indifferent. He said anything other than a Labour win in the seat would leave that community consigned to “another five years on the outside”

Nargund said he became involved in community campaigning in 2017, stirred to action by the Grenfell Tower disaster which took place that year. Among his current causes is backing long-running local opposition to Ocado opening a distribution centre next to Yerbury primary school, something the council is also against.

A Labour Party member since around 2009, Nargund has been the head of a company founded by his mother, which provided IVF treatments at lower cost and with fewer drugs than other forms available. They now run Create Impact Ventures, which invests in companies Nargund says are “going to have a social impact”. He will “step back from all the businesses” if he becomes an MP.

Nargund says that if elected he would initiate “a new approach to bringing people together locally to solve problems”, focussing on skills and “bringing together our businesses, our colleges and our unions to come up with a local skills plan, so we can make sure young people get access to the jobs of the future”.

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