Jeremy Corbyn will automatically be on the ballot in the upcoming Labour leadership election, after winning a bruising internal battle over an interpretation of the party’s rulebook.
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The Opposition leader said he was “delighted” that the secret vote of the ruling National Executive Committee went in his favour after hours of discussions at the party’s headquarters in central London.
Jeremy Corbyn WILL be on the ballot for the upcoming Labour leadership contest, the party’s chief administrative body announced this evening.
His opponents in the party, who want him gone as leader, had argued that under party rules he needed to be nominated by 51 Labour MPs and MEPs to stand again.
Eagle said she was pleased the NEC had reached a decision.
However, he remains overwhelmingly popular with Labour members who will vote in the actual contest, making him favourite to win for the second time. “And I am determined to win it”.
She said she had eventually chose to launch a formal challenge because he was unwilling to stand down and she could provide the real leadership he could not.
Maria Exall, a trade union activist, told the Workers’ Liberty magazine she saw Mr Corbyn’s leadership as “a massive opportunity to push forward socialist ideas in Britain” when he was elected in September, 2015.
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was highly likely that the Labour Party itself would challenge the decision in the courts.
However, there was also a setback for Mr Corbyn as the NEC changed some rules for the contest, so people can only vote if they have been a member for at least six months.
But McCluskey also acknowledged “the legitimate concerns of Labour MPs”, leaving the door open to concessions to the right.
Anyone who joined after then will have to pay an extra £25 to become a “registered supporter” – and will get a two-day window in which to do so.
Without automatic inclusion in the race Mr Corbyn would nearly certainly have been unable to defend his position.
Dennis Skinner, who sits on the committee, compared the 172 Labour MPs who backed a no confidence motion in Mr Corbyn to the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM), who he said supported Margaret Thatcher during the miners’ strike of the Eighties.
“That’s what the Labour party exists for”. Police said on Tuesday that Eagle’s constituency office in northern England had been vandalised.
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Mrs. Eagle’s Facebook page has been hijacked by abusive Corbyn supporters, and a message was left on the answer phone of her House of Commons office telephone calling her a “f*cking b*tch”.
