Sir Keir Starmer 

• WE are writing to express our dismay at the refusal of Sir Keir Starmer to restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn was suspended for comments made about the context of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report.

Some people may not have wanted to hear them, but they were perfectly legitimate and supported by evidence, for example showing that the public hugely overestimate the proportion of the Labour Party that have had anti-Semitism complaints made against them.

Chief whip Nick Brown’s demand that Corbyn should apologise “unequivocally” for his statement, as a condition for having the whip restored, is particularly oppressive. It is, in effect, outlawing the expression of legitimate opinion.

The EHRC report states, appropriately, that there should be no political interference in disciplinary processes.

Corbyn’s case was heard by a duly constituted panel of the NEC almost three weeks later. It decided, unanimously, on legal advice and its own hearing of the case, to lift the suspension.

However, instead of accepting that decision and moving on, Sir Keir chose – in what appears to be a blatant breach of the rules and procedures – to refuse to restore the whip to Corbyn.

We are faced with the bizarre situation in which Corbyn sits in the House of Commons as a full member of the Labour Party, but not a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Sir Keir stood on a platform of party unity but seems determined to drive those party members who voted for Corbyn as leader – not once but twice – out of its fold.

He may want to remember that 60 per cent of his own CLP members supported Corbyn in the coup against him in 2017.

This dispute has nothing to do with fighting anti-Semitism, a fight to which we are all firmly committed.

It has everything to do with our desire to stop political interference in disciplinary processes – condemned by the EHRC report which Sir Keir accepted unquestioningly!

At stake is far more than righting a wrong perpetrated against Jeremy Corbyn, important though that is.

Sir Keir Starmer has called into question the very nature of the Labour Party as a democratic organisation in which political debate and discussion flows freely and is its life-blood.

He needs to back down now, restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn, and allow the party to move on and to heal. Any other course would be madness.

HELENA AKSENTIJEVIC, RUTH APPLETON, REBEKAH BALL, ANN BATTLE, HEATHER BOWER, PAUL BOWER, JIMENA CASTRO, PAUL CLYNDES, UNA DOYLE, HARRIET EVANS, MARTIN FAHEY, ANDREW FEINSTEIN, SARAH FRIDAY, RIVA JOFFE, RICHARD KUPER, LINDA LEFREVRE, SUSANNA MITCHELL, RHONA MICHIE, LUCY MOY-THOMAS, GARETH MURPHY, JOANNE O’BRIEN, MARY O’SULLIVAN, SIMON PEARSON, DIANE PEARSON, TOM REED, PAUL RENNY, SHEZAN RENNY, PETER ROBBINS, KIM ROPER, AMANDA SEBESTYEN, TOM SELWYN, RANJIT SINGH, FELICITY TAYLOR, ZIA TESHOLME, GUINEVERE TUFNELL, NICHOLAS WEAVER, ROBERT WEST, JOHN WHITTINGTON, PETER WICKENDEN, ZULMA WICKENDEN