“The parliamentary Labour Party really needs to fall in behind him so we have a united party to take on the Conservatives”.
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Many were thought to have signed up to back the current leader.
Labour’s National Executive Committee decided on July 12 – referred to as the “freeze date” – that full members would not be able to vote if they had not enjoyed continuous party membership for at least six months.
Labour challenger Owen Smith had speculated that numerous 130,000 members would back incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn, and his campaign team had called for the leadership battle to be extended by up to two weeks.
The NEC, which has carried out this attack on democracy, has already been repudiated by the party’s membership.
But the references to a 20th Century revolutionary are still a reminder of the fractious heritage of a party that moved firmly to the centre during 13 years in power under prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but whose members voted to reject that shift in selecting Corbyn last year. Just 22 per cent of those who took part said they supported the appeal.
The Court of Appeal upheld the challenge this afternoon, blocking 130,000 of the party’s members from having their say in the leadership contest.
“Serious questions must be raised, however, over why and how the NEC Procedures Committee brought this appeal”. Mr Corbyn’s supporters took less than 24 hours to raise the £30,000 legal bill the five members had to foot.
In a wide-ranging interview in the Observer, Mr Corbyn, dismissed Mr Watson’s warning that Labour had been infiltrated by hard left activists adopting similar tactics to those of the Militant Tendency in the 1970s and 1980s. Another member of the Committee is Margaret Beckett-widely despised for her ongoing support for the Iraq War and its co-architect, the indicted war criminal and former Labour leader Tony Blair.
“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”.
Momentum, a Corbyn-supporting grassroots movement which says it wants to ensure Labour implements socialist policies such as wealth distribution, dismissed Watson’s remarks as conspiracy theories.
There have been suggestions the majority of the recruits barred from voting would have backed Mr Corbyn.
A central aim of the Blairites in attempting to remove Corbyn is the reversal of the June 23 referendum vote for the United Kingdom to leave the UK.
Owen Smith ‘s small leadership hopes are boosted by the ruling that new members can be excluded from the contest.
“For every Green supporter and non-voter Jeremy attracts to Labour he loses the support of several ordinary voters, as those of us who have been meeting local voters in recent weeks and months can confirm”, she wrote.
The High Court declared on Monday that refusing five members the vote would be an unlawful breach of the party’s contract. “I am not sure I am convinced that the contrary is arguable”.
“I just ask Tom to do the maths – 300,000 people have joined the Labour Party”.
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A spokesman said: “In other words, this is a “make it up as you go along” rule”.
