Emails released Friday by Wikileaks revealing that the Democratic National Committee worked secretly to undermine Bernie Sanders's campaign for U.S. president caused an uproar this week in Philadelphia. While secret documents this explosive nature have yet to emerge across the Atlantic, a similar witch-hunt from within is underway against the U.K.'s powerful leftist Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

As the party moves toward its own dramatic round of leadership elections, following the Brexit vote and the ascension of Theresa May as the new Conservative prime minister, many of those backing Corbyn are crying conspiracy since a majority of Members of Parliament, 172-40, passed a vote of no confidence on him last month. At issue is Corbyn's right to stand as Labour leader against center-left candidate and former work and pensions spokesperson Owen Smith.

On Tuesday, a legal hearing took place to establish whether Corbyn may stand without receiving 50 nominations from MPs and Members of European Parliament. Meanwhile, non-Labour Party members who support Corbyn were recently charged £25 to register to vote for him, while new party members who joined since January are being denied the right to vote for him altogether.

Dr. Bart Cammaerts, a senior lecturer in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics, was quick to point out that something is wrong with this picture.

“In conjunction with denying party members who joined after January 2016 the right to vote, this steep increase in the fee to become a supporting member feels very much like gerrymandering to me,” Cammaerts told Occupy.com. Nonetheless, the move already seems to be backfiring on Smith supporters.

“In two days, an astonishing 183,000 people have paid the £25 to receive the right to vote. I suspect, however, that Corbyn’s adversaries will try to reject as many of these as possible in the coming days.”

Cammaerts attributes Corbyn’s success to his identity as “a principled and honest politician, down to earth and not fake… and also a seasoned campaigner. Those within the Labour party that want to get rid of him have greatly underestimated the degree and strength of his support and how he has managed to galvanize the party internally, especially amongst young people,” he said.

On the question of whether or not Corbyn is electable as a prime minister, Cammaerts added, “Many people will answer with a definite no, and that is precisely one of the reasons why his leadership is being challenged. Paradoxically, however, the anti-Corbyn forces within Labour might very well have achieved the complete opposite of what they aimed to achieve: By surviving this leadership challenge, he will gain increased respect amongst the electorate.”

Rheian Davies, a London lawyer and previous winner of the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year prize, is a firm Corbynista. She said she heard from sources about the unfair treatment Corbyn received in Parliament, and was heartened by Corbyn's response.

“I quite coincidentally met [the shadow chancellor and Corbyn supporter] John McDonell on the train after a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting [of MPs],” Davies told Occupy.com, and “he described the way Corbyn was treated at the meeting [as] ‘a lynching without the rope’. Each MP got up and told him how useless he was, followed by a full-scale assault from the media. Many people would have crumbled. Corbyn did not.”

The idea of Labour splitting into two parties – Corbyn supporters and Corbyn opponents – has been mooted by some. “If they create different parties then electoral oblivion would follow, even though the Parliamentary Labour Party is heavily invested in the infrastructure of the party,” Davies said. “It would spoil Labour’s chances. These are not normal political times. Pundits can no longer sit twiddling their swingometers.”

She believes Corbyn still has a strong chance of election – both as Labour leader and eventually PM. “No one likes plotters,” she concluded, "especially not failed plotters. The next election will probably offer the clearest choice that voters have had for two generations. I for one am convinced that Labour can win and win big."

That view was echoed by David Silverman, a small business consultant and fellow Corbyn supporter.

“Many obstacles were strewn deliberately in Corbyn’s path by senior party activists concerned that he might actually win and that their record as acolytes of the ‘New Labour’ hierarchy would end their political careers,” Silverman told Occupy.com. “These obstacles included press releases reminding the public of past political ‘indiscretions’ by Jeremy, such as having a reputation for defying party discipline and reportedly having some dubious political ‘friends’ such as Hamas and Hezbollah – but not the IRA, as mentioning them would have watered down the impact, because the IRA are no longer terrorists.”


Labour officials have even gone so far as to trawl the Twitter feeds of suspected members of other parties who are signing up for Labour simply to vote for Corbyn. “The obstacles placed in his way have also included the ‘Compliance Unit,’ a mechanism run by party headquarters that vetted membership applications and weeded out people supposedly not 100% committed to the party,” added Silverman. “This included suspected ‘entryists’ and anyone they could find an excuse to remove from the membership list. This did not, however, suffice to stop the campaign to get Corbyn elected, and he won 60% of the votes in all sectors of the party.”

At the time of writing, Judge Justice Foskett promised to hand down his judgment on the appeal over Corbyn’s right to stand without nominations from MPs on July 28.

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