Over 3,000 'cheats' banned from voting in the Labour leadership contest, party says

The Labour leadership electorate now numbers 553,954 people

Labour leadership hopefuls, from left, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn on the BBC (PA)

Three thousand alleged “cheats” have been excluded from voting to choose the next leader of the Labour party, Harriet Harman has said.

The acting Labour leader confirmed that Labour was continuing to root out people who did not really support the party but were trying to vote in its leadership contest.

“Those people who don’t support the aims and values of the Labour party are not entitled to vote. We will continue the process of verification right up until the last minute,” she told BBC News.

“It is not funny or clever for people from other parties to try to cheat their way into our system.”

Harriet Harman says most of the excluded ballots are duplicates or missing from the electoral register (Getty)

When registration closed the party said the electorate was composed of 610,000 people. This figure has been revised down to 553,954 – a fall of 60,000 people.

This steep fall was largely attributable to duplicate applications and people who were not on the electoral register, the party said – and was not the result of foul play.

People are only entitled to one voter in the Labour leadership contest, but some may be entitled in a number of ways, either through membership of a trade union, the party itself, or a supporter scheme.

The party says the 3,138 people excluded for breaking its rules included 400 Conservatives, some of whom have said they would try to vote for candidates they consider weak in order to undermine the Labour party.

1,900 Green Party supporters have also been excluded. A large number of Greens have said they have been attracted to vote in the contest because they like left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn.

This morning on BBC Radio 5Live Mr Corbyn said any influx of genuine supporters should be welcomed “because that's how parties grow".

Last month the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph newspaper urged its readers to join the party to swing its leadership in favour of Jeremy Corbyn.

Some Conservatives have said they do not think Mr Corbyn would be a good Labour leader and that he would be easy to defeat at a general election.

Voting in the contest is underway, with the winner announced at a special party conference in September.