Concern about how the Labour leadership contest has been run is spreading throughout the party. The former home secretary Charles Clarke, who has voted Kendall 1st, Cooper 2nd and Burnham 3rd, told Newsnight he was very disappointed in the contest and raised the prospect of legal challenges to the result:
‘I think it’s been a disaster unfortunately. I am very sad about it. I wrote about it immediately after the election — it was very important to get through to have a process where people had confidence in the election process.
‘We’ve got legal challenges, I think there may be still further legal challenges about the process; issues about who can, who can’t vote. Many party members who’ve been active for years distressed to see people campaigning against the party with an equal vote to them in these circumstances and I think we’ve made a series of mistakes.’
Clarke singled out Labour’s National Executive Committee, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband to blame for the situation:
‘I think the National Executive Committee … I don’t think Harriet has done it very well. I think the changes Ed Miliband brought in were a mistake and many people argued that at the time and there have been a series of mistakes of this kind.’
Then Caroline Flint, who is running to be Labour’s deputy leader, told the Today programme this morning she is concerned about how the party is verifying registered supporters and affiliated supporters:
‘I think political parties, not just the Labour party, have certain rights over who can be part of their processes, whatever that may be as members or to take part in this case in this leadership contest.
Flint also raised the prospect of using canvass returns to help decide whether voters in the leadership contest should be excluded or not:
‘I think that actually that it’s part of the discussion we should have; why wouldn’t we use canvass returns … I think it’s worth considering whether or not the canvas returns should be used because the truth is, just over two months ago we had an election and if canvas return show that people actively did not vote Labour or voted for other parties, then that’s down the party whether it should be taken into the consideration.’
A meeting is being held at Labour HQ this morning to discuss how the infiltrators are being dealt with. As Isabel reported yesterday, none of the leadership camps are calling for the contest to be halted — they are simply looking for reassurances. But if those reassurances aren’t good enough, it begs question: what happens next? There are just 17 days left until the new leader is announced, thousands have already voted and it seems a tad late in the process to begin talking up the idea that the contest hasn’t been satisfactory. Despite the warnings of Clarke and Flint, it looks as if a shadow will hang over the result — regardless of who wins.
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