UK Labour Party can exclude new members from leadership vote, court rules

That was the basis upon which each Claimant joined the party; and the basis upon which they each entered into the contract between members inter se.

Britain’s Labour party won a legal battle Friday over voting procedures in its leadership contest which has deepened already serious divisions in the main opposition party.

Foster had sued to stop Corbyn from running again for the party leadership without first getting the backing of at least 51 members of Parliament as proscribed by the party’s rules.

The five new members who dropped their legal case later issued a clarification to their estimate of the cost of bringing their case before the Supreme Court.

Labour Party leadership challenger Owen Smith is centrists’ choice for leader.

Former MP David Miliband quit politics after his brother beat him to the leadership.

Labour appealed the ruling, saying it needed to defend the right of the NEC in this area, and today the appeal proved successful.

Smith pulled no punches Sunday when he said Labour was in crisis and warned it could “disappear overnight”.

This was part of blatantly anti-democratic moves by the right wing, aimed at rigging the contest so as to oust nominally “left” leader Jeremy Corbyn from power.

In an effort to reverse that decision, the party general secretary Iain McNicol appealed the ruling, acting on behalf of the entire party.

Owen Smith and Jeremy Corbyn will go head-to-head in September but 130,000 newly paid up members who signed up less than six months ago, will be cut from the contest.

They said: “The court’s ruling disenfranchises almost 130,000 Labour members, who joined the party since January and were explicitly told that they would have a vote in any leadership election”.

The Labour leader’s campaign chairman John McDonnell accused the NEC of using a “grubby little device” to overturn the original decision.

She added: “Yesterday’s meeting marked a milestone in the development of the Labour Party in Northern Ireland, and I am proud that the debate was conducted in such a collegiate atmosphere”.

The High Court had ruled in favour of five new Labour members who challenged the executive committee’s decision on Monday.

Mr Smith told the Chronicle in an interview that he wanted to build more than 11,000 new homes in the North East every year. And, of course, the Court of Appeal has made, legally, the right decision.

The big problem for Labour is whether the people of Britain are ready to hand them the keys to 10 Downing Street.

Michael Foster, a Jewish donor to the British Labour Party, on Saturday night condemned Jeremy Corbyn’s close team as “Nazi stormtroopers, ‘ further intensifying the competition for the future of the Labour Party”.

The group, which claims to represent “a breadth of personal political views”, are alarmed about the findings of a recent study which claimed BBC was among TV and online media that were “persistently biased” against Corbyn during the Shadow Cabinet resignations in June.