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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Damien Gayle and Nadia Khomami

Labour NEC challenges high court decision allowing new members to vote – as it happened

Incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn and challenger Owen Smith participate in live debate.

We’re closing this live blog now, but our politics reporter Jessica Elgot will be back with a new live blog covering tonight’s Labour leadership hustings at 6.45pm.

Thanks for reading, and for your comments.

Owen Smith’s team have accused Corbyn of travelling more miles in the first three weeks of his leadership campaign than he did during the two-month campaign to keep Britain in the EU, Buzzfeed reports.

A spokesperson for the Jeremy for Labour campaign responded: “These kind of smears only show how little Owen Smith has to offer. Jeremy did 122 campaigning events to stay in the EU, considerably fewer than he will do for the leadership campaign and far more than Owen Smith did.”

GQ has published a new interview with Liz Kendall, in which the former Labour leadership contender says the party will be “a rump” if Corbyn gets back in.

Updated

NEC appeal judgement will be handed down tomorrow

The judgement in the NEC’s appeal against allowing new members the vote in the Labour leadership election will be handed down tomorrow in the court of appeal.

Updated

Robert Griffiths, the general secretary of the Communist Party, has condemned sectarian entryism into the Labour party, Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson reports.

Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, has said the public still need to be given a full explanation as to why Justice Lowell Goddard resigned from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Professor Alexis Jay is to take over as chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse following the resignation of Justice Lowell Goddard, the home secretary has announced.

Jay, a child protection expert with more than 30 years experience led the official inquiry into the Rotherham scandal which found that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in the town between 1997 and 2013.

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, announcing Jay’s appointment said: “She has a strong track record in uncovering the truth and I have no doubt she will run this independent inquiry with vigour, compassion and courage.”

Goddard, a New Zealand judge who was the third person to have been named as inquiry chair, offered her resignation last week saying the inquiry had been beset by a “legacy of failure”.

Updated

Alexis Jay to chair Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Professor Alexis Jay, who led the Rotherham abuse inquiry, will be the new chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the home secretary has announced.

The latest YouGov polls show that the Conservative lead over Labour has halved since last week, from 14 points to seven.

According to the pollsters:

The Conservatives’ new Prime Minister “bounce” may now be coming to an end, with the party dropping four points to 38% in YouGov’s latest voting intention survey. Labour has seen a three point recovery to 31%, although they are still performing below their pre-referendum figures.

However, TNS polls being publicised by SavingLabour, the secretive anti-Corbyn faction that refuses to reveal its funding, suggest that the Labour leader’s personal ratings are abysmal.

Jessica Elgot, our reporter at the court of appeal, has filed her take on the first half-day of the NEC’s appeal against allowing new members the vote. Her story takes in the arguments of Clive Sheldon, acting on behalf of the NEC and Labour general secretary Ian McNicol. She writes:

Labour’s national executive committee must have the power to determine who is eligible to vote in a leadership election, depending on the circumstances surrounding the poll, the court of appeal has heard.

The party is appealing against a high court ruling that the NEC was wrong to block 130,000 new members from voting in the leadership election by imposing a retrospective six-month freeze.

Clive Sheldon QC, acting for the party’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, told Lord Justice Beatson, Lady Justice Macur and Lord Justice Sales that the party’s rulebook gave the NEC the power to define the eligibility criteria.

The NEC was “the guardian of the constitution”, he said. “What we have done is consistent with the rules framework, but even if it were not, the NEC still has the power to go against the rules framework.”

There was “nothing in the [party] rulebook which says a freeze date cannot be retrospective,” he went on. “That is entirely an operational matter which must be left to the NEC to determine because it knows the state of the party.”

Questions are already being asked about how Unison went about its consultation, with some pointing out that the 20,190 members who took part in the union’s online consultation constituting just a tiny fraction of its 1.3 million membership.

The questions asked were:

Would you like the Labour Link committee to nominate a candidate in the forthcoming Labour Leadership election?

And:

If the Unison Labour Link committee decides to nominate a candidate, do you have a preference on which candidate they should nominate?

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis has said that the views of those members who backed Owen Smith “will always be respected in our union”, obliquely addressing the constant accusations of bullying and so-called “uncomradely” behaviour that have dogged the campaign - and indeed the Labour party since Corbyn won the leadership last year.

In his statement, Prentis warned that Labour risked winning from the Tories the unwelcome sobriquet of the “nasty party” if such behaviour continued:

Jeremy Corbyn retains the backing of a majority of Unison’s Labour-supporting members. That’s why the committee supported his nomination again.

However, a significant minority backed Owen Smith. Their views will always be respected in our union - that’s our proud tradition.

It’s healthy for people to hold alternative views on the future direction of the party. What’s toxic though is for abuse, threats and aggressive language to be considered acceptable, or the norm.

Labour is in danger of becoming the new ‘nasty party’ if this behaviour continues unchecked. There’s no place in the party for witch hunts against MPs, councillors and party staff.

The decent, hard-working people we represent don’t want a party riven by in-fighting. They want a united opposition that stands up for public services which are facing intolerable pressures.

Unison backs Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader

News just in: Unison has given its supporting nomination for the Labour leadership to Jeremy Corbyn, according to the Labour leader’s campaign.

Britain’s second-largest trade union, with 1.3 million members, says its membership voted 58% to 42% in favour of Corbyn over the challenger, Owen Smith. Particularly relevant in light of Jess Phillips’s comments today, the union notes that women are in the majority among its membership.

In response to the news, Corbyn said:

I am proud to have the support of Unison members. Their incredible work, against the backdrop of cuts, privatisation and outsourcing of public services, keeps the services we all rely on running - from the NHS to local government.

We need a Labour Party that gives them a voice - that halts and reverses the cuts, privatisation, and outsourcing that are ripping Britain’s communities and services apart.

The next Labour government will create a million new jobs and build a million new homes - and we will end the public sector pay cap overnight. In the NHS and across the public sector, we will push back against outsourcing and privatisation, and invest properly in staff and infrastructure. Our plan to rebuild and transform Britain so that no one and nowhere is left behind will restore dignity, jobs and quality to our public services.

The court of appeal is just about to get going again after its lunchtime recess. In the meantime, Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, who has been vocal about her opposition to Corbyn and what she believes is male-domination in the Labour party, has written for the Guardian about the lack of female candidates for forthcoming mayoral elections.

Phillips accuses Corbyn of placing more importance on securing jobs for his “brothers in arms” than advancing the cause of women and says he failed to respond to her attempts to discuss the issue with him. She says:

People tell me I should just get behind Jeremy, work with him. On this, I tried. I would have gladly organised events in the regions for women members and councillors. I would have gone with Jeremy, stood shoulder to shoulder on platforms, encouraged women to give it a go, and offered tips and mentoring about being a representative and standing for selection. I was willing to work hard to do something that would have made Jeremy look good.

I’m left disappointed and deflated again. I don’t know why Jeremy didn’t answer. I don’t know why his office ignored my advances. They never ignored me before and haven’t since. He told me he was a feminist. I suppose feminism is out of the window when your brothers in arms want the jobs. The Labour party is becoming a movement of words not deeds.

Sheldon’s submissions on behalf of Labour NEC are now over, its time to hear the barrister for the respondents.

A central plank of the original claimants’ case was that the Labour party website said they would be eligible to vote in a leadership contest. But Sheldon says: “The website can’t be relied upon as providing a definitive meaning of the rules.”

“I’m trying to have my cake and eat it,” Sheldon admits when a judge points out that he is both telling them background is not important, then using a lot of background material to support his case.

Here’s our Jessica Elgot again, with the latest from the court of appeal, where they are wrangling over the issue of “freeze dates”.

High court judge "got it wrong" by allowing the 130,000 to vote, NEC claims

The Press Association has filed a report summing up the developments so far in the court of appeal. Here is a lightly edited version:

Labour’s ruling body has accused a High Court judge of “getting it wrong” when he decided that new party members were legally entitled to vote in the forthcoming leadership election.

Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, is asking the Court of Appeal to reinstate a block imposed by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on nearly 130,000 recruits getting the vote.

Clive Sheldon QC, appearing for Mr McNicol, told three appeal judges on Thursday that the question for the court was whether Mr Justice Hickinbottom “erred” when he decided that the NEC did not have the power to restrict the right of members to vote under the contract between members of the Labour Party, as set out in the rule book .

The QC submitted: “The learned judge below got it wrong. The NEC is afforded by the rule book sufficiently broad powers that it can actually override the rules framework in a particular case, if it so wishes.

“They are the guardian of the constitution. What we have done is consistent with the rules framework.”

Referring to the criteria for voting, Mr Sheldon said the NEC “defines the precise eligibility criteria, meaning it fixes the eligibility criteria, it sets the boundaries, it sets the limits for the eligibility criteria”.

Lawyers for the five members who brought the original challenge to the NEC decision are opposing the appeal and asking the judges - Lord Justice Beatson, sitting with Lady Justice Macur and Lord Justice Sales - to uphold the High Court ruling.

They are arguing that the NEC had no power within the party rules to retrospectively “freeze” a full member’s ability to vote in any leadership election.

Updated

Judges are now quizzing Sheldon on the details of his argument. He has said that the power to define voting eligibility rests with the NEC.

This tweet from the courtroom by Dan Bloom, the Mirror’s politics reporter, about sums up the tenor of the debate:

The QC representing Labour is Clive Sheldon who, according to his online bio, is “a Leading Silk in the fields of Administrative & Public Law, Employment Law, Education Law and Local Government Law.”

He has a long history of cases involving government and politics, previously working as a legal advisor to the attorney general:

Before taking Silk, Clive was for many years a member of the Attorney-General’s ’A’ Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown. Since taking Silk, Clive has continued to advise and represent various government departments at all levels of the Court system.

The judge asks:

Is your point in selecting the freeze date - absent issues of bias ... - is the point that this is about an operational implementation and that is the area that within the framework of a political party they know more than us?

MicNicol’s barrister replies: “Yes ... there is nowhere in the rule book that says that a freeze date cannot be retrospective.”

McNicol’s barrister argues that a section of the rulebook pertaining to reselection of candidates following a boundary review specifically gives the NEC power to define “freeze dates” for eligible electors.

Now the court is being directed to Appendix 1 of the rule book.

“Members enjoy the formal democratic rights of membership according to the rules,” he reads out.

Appendix 2:

The party is however concerned that no individual or faction should recruit members improperly in order to seek to influence our democratic processes. The recruitment of large numbers of paper members ... undermines our party democracy.

These are statements of principle that provide support for the decision they took regarding the 130,000 new members, the barrister says.

We’re on to a different section of the Labour party rulebook now, with the barrister saying that it shows that members will “ordinarily” have equal rights, but that can be altered by the exercise of the rules. He tells the court:

The important point is equivalence ... except as prescribed in these rules. Where the rules allow for non-equivalence then they don’t have equal equivalent rights.

Labour barrister tells the court: One of the key questions in this case, is what does it mean to define the eligibility criteria?

“The parties to the contract are ... recognising that the NEC has an interpretive role,” says Labour’s barrister. He goes on to argue that where the NEC says it has a particular power, it does mean that the court should provide a degree of deference to the NEC.

This tweet from Jessica pretty much encapsulates the case that the Labour NEC is seeking to make in their appeal.

So basically the NEC can do whatever it blimmin’ well pleases, thank you very much.

The barrister for Ian McNicol is arguing that “the power to impose the condition ... is clear from the express words of the rule book.”

He says he has finished his preliminary submissions. Now, he is directing the court to page 405 of the rule book...

My colleague Jessica Elgot is at the court of appeal watching the case and live tweeting the proceedings. It’s starting a bit slowly, from the sound of things.

Good morning, on another day set to be full of drama in the Labour party.

Today Labour’s national executive committee, the party’s ruling body, is challenging a high court decision allowing new party members to vote in the forthcoming leadership election. It comes after a majority of NEC members, including the deputy leader, Tom Watson, decided to appeal against a ruling that the party had wrongly disenfranchised 130,000 members, most of whom are thought to back the incumbent leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Justice Hickinbottom, sitting in London, declared on Monday that refusing them the right to vote would amount to a breach of contract. Party officials say they are appealing to “defend the NEC’s right” to uphold Labour’s rules. The case will be heard by Lord Justice Beatson, sitting with Lady Justice Macur and Lord Justice Sales.

There has been speculation that Labour general secretary, Iain McNicol, could face being ousted if the party loses its appeal as divisions within the party deepen still further.

Tonight, Corbyn and his challenger, Owen Smith will go head to head in Gateshead, for the second hustings of the leadership race, which will give both men the chance to spell out their policy platforms.

Updated

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