A former minister has called the party’s current position as “the final battle for the heart of the Labour Party”. In a bid to try and gain back control of the party from the grips of Mr Corbyn’s hard-left, prominent backbenchers have urged activists to sign up in order to tip the balance back in their favour, according to The Daily Telegraph.
However, a senior Labour insider has warned that their efforts could be crushed by the National Executive Committee (NEC), which rules the party and is very much in the palms of the disgraced leader’s allies.
The NEC had allegedly temporarily restricted voting rights to exclude members who had been registered for less than six months during the 2016 leadership bid between Mr Corbyn and Owen Smith.
An NEC source has said that the committee’s senior members would be meeting next week to discuss the process.
They added that they were “sure” the restrictions on voting rights “will be debated”.
They added: “There will have to be a discussion about the length of time you have been a member.”
There are now growing fears that the current “Corbynistas” who have taken over the party, could scupper efforts to elect a new leader who could drag the party back into the centre.
Backbencher MP Jess Phillips, has now been seen as a favourite to take over as leader.
However, she has warned against a political stitch up and called for the leadership contest to be “truly open”.
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She added: “The truth is that any stitch up of rules to be anything other than truly open will make the membership reject the favoured son/daughter. Let’s just do the right thing for once.”
It comes as 15 former MPs have clubbed together to savage the Labour leader in a full-page advertisement published in an array of newspapers in the party’s northern heartlands.
The advert, published by the anti-extremism campaign group Mainstream in the North of England, was headlined: ‘Thinking of voting Labour? Think again.’
Former ministers including Ian Austin, Gisela Stuart and Ivan Lewis put their names to the advert, along with Ann Coffey, Louise Ellman, Rob Flello, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Tom Levitt, Michael McCann, Joan Ryan, Gavin Shuker and John Woodcock.
The advert said: “Everyone wants a safer, fairer society. But in this election the Labour Party is set to deliver the opposite.
“We were all lifelong Labour voters and all former Labour MPs.
“We are voting for different parties at this election, but we have all come to the difficult decision not to vote Labour.”
The advert warned about the rise of anti-Semitism in Labour ranks under Mr Corbyn’s leadership and accused him of being “weak on national security”.
It added: “We know it is a it’s a hard decision for Labour supporters to make. It was for us too.
“But millions of people who have voted Labour all their lives now think the risk of Jeremy Corbyn getting into Number 10 is too great.
“The party has changed. Labour is no longer the party we supported all our lives.”
