What he said. The Labour process is one member or affiliate, one vote. Members are - well - people who have joined the party and are up to date with fees. Affiliates are a) members of a Trade Union that is affiliated with the Labour Party and pays the affiliation fee b) registered supported of the party who have paid the one-off supporter fee.
Corbyn first stood for the leadership under a National Executive Committee controlled by right wing Labour MPs who were astonished when he won. They immediately instigated both overt and covert schemes to undermine him, briefing the press with misinformation about him, staged press interviews, staged resignations from committees and shadow govt. posts, simple rumour spreading - anything and everything they could to damage his reputation. Finally he was challenged for the leadership after less than 12 months. The opposition campaign was marked by a wide range of dirty tricks. The covert relationship with the press continued and MPs such as Stephen Kinnock, Chuka Umuna, Hilary Benn and several others felt free to give interviews where they openly rubbished Corbyn's ability and authority and issued all kinds of threats about not working with him. He and his supporters were characterised as bullying left-wing thugs (which judging by the mild, rather innoffensive, rather ordinary people I met - oh, and me of course, didn't quite ring true). Members who joined within 6 months of the election were told they couldn't vote even though voting was expressly offered during sign up. Many members who expressed support for Jeremy Corbyn were actually expelled from the party (unbelievable but true). People registering as supporters had their applications declined usually for spurious reasons and the NEC raised the fee from £3 to £25. He won again, this time increasing his majority to >60%.
I've missed so much: the attempt to exclude him from the ballot paper when he was challenged for the leadership (wasting a fortune in High Court), the meeting to exclude 'new' members where an emergency motion was raised and voted on just after Corbyn had left the room - it goes on and on like a lunatic conspiracy story so wild that if you put it in a novel the publisher would throw it back at you as ridiculously far-fetched.
And these were the people on his side - the Labour Party. He was the leader, He had a huge majority. He had to put up with this before he even began to fight his corner with the opposition. That makes what he managed in this election even more astonishing.
Edit: and yes, the DUP are charming.
EDITED: 9 Jun 2017 17:50 by WILLIAMA