Whoever wins the Labour leadership contest, questions will be raised about how it has been run. If Corbyn loses, his supporters will become even more angry about the ‘purge’ of the Corbynites. For Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, entryism is their chief concern and Team Burnham have decided to publicly raise the issue. Michael Dugher, Burnham’s campaign chair, has written to Labour general secretary Iain McNico calling for an urgent meeting to discuss what can be done.
Interestingly, Dugher singles out Tory infiltrators as the main entryism concern instead of the Communist/Green/Health Action party activists others in Labour are worried about — the Burnham camp doesn’t want to disgruntle these new members:
‘There do however remain concerns about potential Tory infiltration on a large scale, with a Conservative MP, Conservative media commentators, and Conservative councillors all having been rejected.
‘This suggests the 121,000 registered supporters could include several thousand Tory infiltrators, as well as supporters of other parties seeking to have a vote in the election. While we accept the party has processes in place, there is potentially more that can be done by the party nationally and regionally as well as by local CLPs to exclude such infiltrators.
‘We are also concerned that given the party’s limited resources and the effort required to investigate applicants, this could result in the integrity of the contest being called into question, and the outcome subject to legal challenge.’
Coffee House understands that Labour HQ has written back and there is now a meeting arranged for next week to discuss how the party is dealing with the influx of new members.
Why are Team Burnham doing this now? Some Labour MPs are wondering whether they are panicking about the state of the contest and are hoping to disrupt things — but ‘why wait so long?’ as one put it. The Burnham camp say they are simply wanting to make sure the party is coping with all of the new members and ensure the proper checks are taking place.
Although the Cooper camp share the entryism concerns, they are waiting to see if there’s any hard evidence of mass infiltrations or if the party operation is proven unfit for purpose before taking any action. But both sides are keen to talk down the idea of a legal challenge to the result. Sources in the Burnham camp vigorously insist the letter is not a sign they intend to challenge the result, while Cooper said yesterday ‘I see no evidence to mount a legal challenge and that’s certainly not what I’m looking at’.
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