Court rules UK’s Labour can omit 1000s from leadership vote

The Labour Party has won its appeal against a High Court ruling that overturned an NEC decision to apply a six month membership cut-off for voting in the leadership contest.

Announcing the ruling, judge Jack Beatson said Labour’s National Executive Committee “has the power to set the criteria for members to be eligible to vote in the leadership election in the way that they did”.

Mr Foster, whose family has donated over £400,000 to the party, described Mr Corbyn’s allies as resembling “stormtroopers” who threatened and intimidated opponents.

They said it was incorrect “both legally and democratically”.

Labour has become a “Moonie-like sect” under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and some of its members don’t care if they win the election, according to a former MP.

After Mr Watson earlier claimed “Trotsky entryists” were seeking to influence the party, Mr Corbyn told the Observer his elected deputy was talking “nonsense” because it is highly unlikely all 300,000 new members belonged to the revolutionary left.

It follows a public slap down in which Jeremy Corbyn accused his deputy of talking “nonsense” – pointing out that the number of new recruits who have joined Labour in the past is nearly certainly greater than the entire membership of every far left grouplet in the UK.

In all, the eight Northern Irish Labour candidates in May’s Assembly election received a total of 1,577 first preference votes – fewer than one vote per party supporter in the Province.

Numerous members affected are believed to back Mr Corbyn rather than his rival Owen Smith and the leader’s campaign team reacted with fury at the court’s decision.

A major Jewish donor to Britain’s Labour Party has compared supporters of party head Jeremy Corbyn to Nazi storm troopers.

Owen Smith ‘s small leadership hopes are boosted by the ruling that new members can be excluded from the contest.

“We are now undermining the democracy of our own party”.

Unfortunately, given the costs involved in pursuing the case further, we have taken the decision that this is where this particular legal case has to stop.

Mr Corbyn said: ‘It (the letter) appeared to be a rehash of a book Michael Crick wrote 20 years ago about alleged entryism into the Labour party at that stage.

“Corbyn and his leadership team have no respect for others and worse, no respect for the rule of law”.

But Mr Watson countered: “There is clear and incontrovertible evidence that a small group of Trotskyite activists have taken leading roles in the Labour Party or are seeking to do so”.

Sheldon stated several times that the NEC was “the guardian of the constitution” and had “extremely wide powers” in presenting a justification for its decision to retroactively disenfranchise thousands of party members.