Labour Party leadership contender Owen Smith (C) poses for a photograph with a group of young Labour supporters during a picnic party in a park in London, Britain August 7, 2016.
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Britain’s Labour Party is appealing against a court High Court ruling that said new party members should have the right to vote in its leadership election.
The NEC decided that full members would not be able to vote if they had not had at least six months’ continuous membership up to 12 July – the “freeze date”.
But party officials intend to mount a legal challenge in order to “defend the NEC’s right” to uphold Labour’s rules, with an appeal hearing expected to take place on Thursday.
Labour’s ruling NEC initially decided anyone who joined the party after January 12 would be barred in a bod to prevent “entryism” but that decision has now been overturned.
Afterwards Kate Harrison of Harrison Grant solicitors, who was representing the five Labour members, told reporters that the victory was about ensuring democracy and the rule of law were enforced: “This is an excellent judgment which shows how seriously the right to vote and the rules are taken”.
When this was unsuccessful, a millionaire party donor tried to challenge the decision in the high court, which also failed. This will hardly endear the membership to MPs and party bosses who owe their lucrative careers to the donations and voluntary labour of the party rank-and-file.
The announcement of the victor of the current Labour Party Leadership contest is, of course, not just a huge focus for those within our Party, but also across the nation as a whole and will attract much attention from both national and global media.
Chairman of the Telford Labour Party Kevin Guy said: “It’s important that both candidates come to Telford”.
Bookmakers seemed to agree, immediately moving to slash the odds of Mr Corbyn winning the contest in the wake of the court’s decision.
The ruling means that all excluded Labour members fit this category are now eligible for £25 in damages from the Labour party, according to lawyers involved in the case.
Mr Straw, who was executive director of the BSIE campaign, told the programme: “With just a couple of weeks to go there were far too many people who didn’t know Labour’s position on the referendum”.
“Labour wants to be a mass movement”. Norway and Switzerland are not members of the European Union but are able to access the single market as members of the EEA, which allows for free movement of goods, people, services and capital.
“We are a democratic socialist party, you can not have one without the other”.
Labour grandee Lord Mandelson has accused party leader Jeremy Corbyn of sabotaging the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. The Labour Party should accept the result and welcome the fact that 130,000 people have given up their time and money to join it in the last six months alone.
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“I think that we are now going through a factious time in the Labour Party, clearly, but I don’t think that it’s appropriate for people to try to blame one individual”.
