The Jeremy for Leader campaign gave its backing to the five claimants and praised the “truly remarkable” solidarity of party members who donated to the cause.
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He added: “The ancient racist rhetoric is that Jews don’t act alone, the malevolent Jew always conspires”.
Last Monday, the five campaigners had won a High Court battle against Labour’s ruling body, paving the way for all members who joined after 12 January to vote in next month’s election between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith. Should he do so, it would spell the end for the hard left “bullies”, he believed.
So far, £93,572 has been donated by others to support the fight – but today, the five – Christine Evangelou, Rev Edward Leir, Hannah Fordham, Chris Granger and a teenage member known as “FM” – said they could not afford to take the case further.
“I simply want to ensure that organisations like the Alliance for Workers Liberty, who have instructed all their members to join the Labour Party and target our youth sections for recruitment, are dealt with under our rules”.
“They invoked an obscure clause in the Labour Party rules (Chapter 4, Clause II, 1.A), which could be read as giving the NEC the right to ignore all of the rules laid out for leadership elections”.
Britain’s Supreme Court ruled last week against the Foster suit.
Corbyn’s campaign spokesman blasted the decision as wrong “both legally and democratically”.
While the majority of Twitter users seem to sway towards that younger demographic – which this writer assumes is likely part of that segment the NEC has seen fit to deny a vote in the leadership contest – some were happy about the ruling, of course.
They did so in defiance of a long-standing ban upon competing in elections, imposed by the England-based party leadership – a ban which Mr Corbyn himself had refused to overturn.
Labour’s leadership election will go ahead with the exclusion of about 130,000 new members after five of them dropped a legal challenge against the decision to bar them. “If we are to build a big, inclusive party to take on the Tories, we need to secure democracy in our party”.
The Holborn and St Pancras MP had previously been a shadow Home Office minister, and said he quit because he had lost confidence in Mr Corbyn’s ability to lead rather than because of major policy differences.
“To repeat again, I have never said that all our new members are Trotskyists”.
“But it’s actually about what we do as a party and as a movement and how we challenge the narrative the Tories are imposing on this country”.
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“It’s undeniable that this is happening”.
