The unexpected decision overturned a court ruling just days earlier that said the Labour Party was not allowed to block new joiners from voting.
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The row has ended up in the courts after the party’s executive committee ruled last month that members who had joined the party since January 12 would not be eligible to vote unless they paid a further 25 pounds ($32).
Mr Corbyn dismissed Mr Watson’s claim that “Trotsky entryists” were manipulating young party members in a bid to boost support for the embattled left-winger.
“Serious questions must be raised over why and how the NEC Procedures Committee brought this appeal”, he added.
They say approximately 150,000 individuals joined the party between January 12 and July 12 and their ability to vote is at stake.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn’s campaign team said: “We think that this is the wrong decision – both legally and democratically”.
Numerous members affected are believed to back Mr Corbyn rather than his rival Owen Smith.
“The original Court decision had wide-ranging implications for the party and the authority of our governing body”.
Mr Watts – who is supporting Owen Smith in the leadership election – directly criticised Mr Corbyn’s privately-educated spin doctor, Seumas Milne – who reportedly earns £97,000 a year. “In doing so, it effectively risked new members’ money on an attempt to disenfranchise them”.
The day after forcing through the appeal, at an estimated cost of almost £250,000, Watson utilised the Guardian-the propagandists in chief of the coup against Corbyn-to launch a McCarthyite red-baiting operation in order to justify a bar on Labour members voting and to deepen the ongoing purge being mounted by the plotters.
“At no stage in anyone’s most vivid imagination are there 300,000 sectarian extremists at large in the country who have suddenly descended on the Labour party”, he said.
But Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “This is a sad day for democracy and makes a mockery of the efforts we have made to get people to participate in our parliamentary democracy, to become members of our political party, and to play a full part in the political process”.
Paddy Lillis, chair of the Labour NEC, welcomed the ruling.
Michael Foster, whose family in the last election contributed more than $500,000 to the party, in an op-ed Sunday in the Daily Mail newspaper referred to Corbyn backers as Sturmabteilung, or SA.
“Unfortunately, given the costs involved in pursuing the case further (the fee for getting the case even heard at the supreme court is around £8,000), we have taken the decision that this is where this particular legal case has to stop”. The case was brought by five new Labour members, with a judgment expected on Friday afternoon.
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He had urged members of his CLP to join him in backing Smith – but, in common with neighbouring branch Hampstead and Kilburn, members went their own way and chose to endorse Mr Corbyn.
