With an election campaign underway, Keir Starmer rammed through the selection of Praful Nargund, a private health care entrepreneur, as the Labour candidate to run against Starmer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn in the London constituency of Islington North.

Starmer had already made it clear that he was going to block Corbyn from seeking the Labour nomination for a seat that he has represented since 1983. When Corbyn declared his intention to run as an independent against the party he first joined as a teenager, the issues that he highlighted spoke volumes about the political character of Starmer’s leadership.

Corbyn called for the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, which Starmer has vowed to maintain. He promised to “never take donations from private healthcare” and “always defend the principle of free, universal healthcare” — an unmistakable allusion to Starmer’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, who is gearing up to reward the private health care interests that have funded his own political operations so generously.