Labour chaos over late ballots
THE Labour leadership race appeared to be wide open last night after it emerged that tens of thousands are still voting with only days to go.
The chaos engulfing the election was laid bare with the revelation that more than 120,000 ballot papers were only posted to party members and supporters last Friday.
Left-wing Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn is widely seen as the frontrunner in the race to succeed Ed Miliband, ahead of Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, with Liz Kendall a distant fourth.
The first voting papers went out in mid-August, but party sources revealed yesterday that ‘well over’ 120,000 were
out on Friday. With that amounting to more than one in five of all of those eligible to vote, a source in one contender’s camp said there was still ‘all to play for’. Another said the race was still ‘up for grabs’.
The surge in new members and supporters has caused a huge headache for Labour HQ as officials attempt to weed out infiltrators.
Members of other political parties have been barred from voting as part of a huge ‘purge’ of unwanted applicants.
At the beginning of last week Labour insisted all ballots would be verified in time, and said checks on voters would be ‘finished in the next few days’.
Yesterday party officials said the process of sending out bal- lots was still going on and could continue right up until the voting deadline on Thursday, September 10.
Anyone receiving their ballot paper without time to post it will be able to vote online. The result will be announced on September 12. Just over 550,000 people are eligible to vote. They include 293,000 fully paid-up party members,150,000 affiliated supporters including union members, and 112,000 registered supporters who pay only £3.
Mr Corbyn came under fire from his Labour leadership rivals last night in a Channel 4 TV debate in which he insisted levels of immigration into Britain were ‘very small’.
He said government figures showing net migration reached a record high of 330,000 last year were ‘misleading’ – and the benefits available to migrants should not be cut.
But he was criticised by Andy Burnham, Labour’s health spokesman, for not offering policies on immigration which would win back voters.
Mr Corbyn was asked by presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy whether he would put ‘ any restrictions’ in place to cut migrant numbers.
He replied: ‘There are restric- tions already, the only free movement is for Europeans. The amount of net immigration is actually very small. And immigrants as a whole are net contributors to the economy.’
Mr Corbyn added: ‘I think restricting benefits is really the wrong agenda to go down.’ Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper criticised him over his links to extremist groups. She said Mr Corbyn’s appearances alongside Hamas and other groups risked legitimising their views.
Mr Burnham said Mr Corbyn was guilty of ‘making excuses’ for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s incursion into the Ukraine. But Mr Corbyn angrily denied the claim.
‘Immigration is
very small’