Ousted former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth hints at future return to parliament

A senior Labour politician who lost their seat in a shock result on election night has hinted at a future to return to parliament.

Jonathan Ashworth, the former Labour MP for Leicester South who was defeated by an independent candidate, told Beth Rigby’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that he was “still around” and “not going anywhere”.

Shortly following his election defeat, Mr Ashworth, who was set to get a cabinet role in government, was appointed head of the influential Labour thinktank Labour Together.

Asked by Rigby whether he could return to Westminster if the circumstances allow – such as in a by-election, for example – Ms Ashworth said: “I’m still around. I’m still going to be involved. I’m not going anywhere.”

Rigby interjected: “I’m going to put a wager on here with myself, obviously betting on political events – ill-advised, if you’re in our business – but I could see a by-election situation where Jon Ashworth is back. Just putting it out there.”

Mr Ashworth replied: “Well, all I would say is people got into a lot of trouble betting on politics in recent weeks. So just be careful!”

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The former Labour MP, who represented Leicester South from 2011 until the election, was ousted by Shockat Adam, an independent candidate who stood on a pro-Gaza platform, by just 979 votes.

Mr Ashworth said it was a “shock” to lose his seat and “brutal to lose”.

However, he said it had been a “very difficult” and “nasty” campaign in his seat.

“I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was,” he said.

“But look, in the end, if a big part of your constituency feels that the campaign is a referendum on one issue in Gaza and felt that somehow I was responsible for the absolutely horrific scenes that we have seen in Gaza, it’s very difficult to try and persuade people that that is not the case, even though we were actually calling for the things that people wanted us to do and demanding of us.”

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Asked whether he thought the media coverage of the election campaign reflected what was happening on the ground, Mr Ashworth said: ” I took the judgement in the campaign to sort of not make a big fuss about all of this, and to try and not make it a sort of national media story, because I didn’t think that would help.

“Maybe that was wrong. Maybe in retrospect, I should have done that.

“Maybe there would have been people who would have come out and voted for me if they’d known what was going on.

“I don’t know, but this is a really frightening phenomenon in British politics.”

The former MP, who was serving as shadow paymaster general before the election was called, also reflected on how parliament’s dynamics had changed since his party won a landslide with 411 seats in parliament and a majority of 174 seats.

He said over the past decade it’s “not been unusual for opposition MPs to gang up and defeat the government with rebels on the government side”.

“It’s completely changed now in parliament. This Labour government’s got a massive majority. It can steamroller things through.”

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Mr Ashworth added: “And this sort of parade of independent MPs are pretty impotent. They sort of sit there as a sort of gaggle of sullen parliamentary eunuchs, frankly, because they’re not going to be able to deliver anything.

“But it’s a Labour government which is working to get a peace in the Middle East. So, look, I’m obviously very shocked and disappointed, but in some ways, if you play this game of politics, you’ve got to accept that you’re going to win and you’re going to lose.

“You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth.”

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