A decision to allow the excluded members to vote was seen as more likely to benefit the incumbent, Mr Corbyn, in the increasingly bad-tempered leadership race.
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Well guess what! Turns out that bit of arbitrary electoral engineering wasn’t just unfair, it was illegal.
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.
He urged Mr Smith to call on the party to rule out mounting a legal challenge to the decision, which is widely viewed to favour Mr Corbyn.
“The Labour Party should not now be pitching member against member and spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on an appeal to keep people from voting”.
Her co-claimant Leir echoed the sentiment, saying: “The Labour Party has seen the greatest surge in membership of any party in decades, with people joining to support a process of change in this country – a change that is desperately needed both politically and economically”.
The case was triggered by an NEC decision that full members would not be able to vote if they had not had at least six months’ continuous membership up to 12 July. You should have been more patient.
Arguing they had been misled, Mr Cragg said: ‘They paid their dues and found to their surprise they had been excluded from the present election.
Ms Harrison stated: “This case was about the right to vote under the Labour Party constitution, under which all members are equal and valued”.
But Mr Justice Hickinbottom, sitting in London, ruled that refusing the five the vote “would be unlawful as in breach of contract”.
Lawyers for the Labour Party and General Secretary Iain McNicol argued that the NEC had “specific power” to impose the bar as part of its duty in drawing up an election timetable and there had been no contractual breach or misrepresentation.
Describing the reform he wants to see of the United Kingdom economy, he will say: “For too long, successive governments have allowed our economy to be too reliant on financial services and the creation of insecure, low-skilled, and low-paid jobs”.
But Mr Corbyn’s campaign team reacted furiously after Mr Watson accused “Trotsky entryists” of returning to the Labour Party and manipulating younger members to boost the leader’s chances of staying in post.
“We are appalled by the possibility of an unnecessary and costly appeal”.
He told Channel 4 News: “It’s not a matter of whether it suits me or not because we don’t know which way these members are going to vote – no-one knows that”.
Shortly after it was annouced Labour would be appealing the judgement, he added: “This is a deeply disappointing decision by a small clique of people behind closed doors, many of whom have openly expressed their opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, who are now trying to use Labour members’ money to fund what they think is a further attack on Jeremy”.
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If the election is delayed, and Labour has no leader in the autumn, which is when political parties and leaders traditionally fire up their grassroots and show how strong their authority is, then the party will appear weaker than ever.
