Remarkably, they now exceed the 201,000 full members the party had in May.
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His call comes as another backbench northern MP, Barry Sheerman, issued a similar warning – and a new poll showing left-winger Jeremy Corbyn storming ahead.
Despite the radical nature of Mr Corbyn’s policies, all of Labour’s deputy leadership candidates said this weekend that they would be prepared to work with him.
“Can we be really certain Jeremy Corbyn is as far ahead of his rivals as the Times YouGov survey suggests?”
As well as regular members, people can sign up as registered supporters for £3 and take part in the vote.
Yesterday Yvette Cooper received a boost when Richard Leese, Labour leader of Manchester City Council, endorsed her. It was a setback for Andy Burnham, who represents a Greater Manchester constituency.
To avoid a #ToriesforCorbyn disaster the party is monitoring 20,000 social media accounts.
But to everybody’s surprise, including his own, the softly-spoken vegetarian who wants to scrap nuclear weapons is now the bookmakers’ favourite to win a ballot whose results will be announced on September 12.
According to the research of 1,411 voters, 67% of trade union affiliates support Mr Corbyn – about 61,600 out of 92,000. This section is seen as the most open to abuse.
The row came as Andy Burnham re-affirmed that he would be prepared to give Mr Corbyn a senior role in the party if he wins. They are reluctant to do so because it would be described by his supporters as “crying foul” because they were going to lose.
New research has found that Corbyn – the darling of Labour hard-left – has increased his lead to 53 per cent, a jump of almost 10 points in recent weeks. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper stands at 18 percent, while openly Blairite Labour MP Liz Kendall remains at 8 percent.
But Labour insisted it has robust procedures in place to identify rogue individuals, with phone conversations even being listened to in a bid to sift out far-left activists infiltrating the vote.
Clarke said Corbyn had a “left-wing, outmoded view of the world”, and said that if the Islington North MP took the reins, he and others would consider tearing up their Labour party membership cards. As The Independent revealed last week, many Green Party candidates have tried to sign up. I am not so much anxious about those, but people from the Socialist Workers Party, people from the Conservative Party, which now includes a Tory Member of Parliament.
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Asked by the paper if he wanted to restore the clause to the party’s constitution, Mr Corbyn said: “I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring clause IV as it was originally written or it’s a different one”.
