LABOUR rightwingers warning of a possible court challenge to the leadership vote are fuelling the row over party membership because Jeremy Corbyn “is setting the political agenda,” his campaign team said last night.

Andy Burnham’s campaign manager Michael Dugher suggested yesterday that the outcome of Labour’s leadership election could be subject to “legal challenge” due to the party’s inability to properly investigate newly registered voters.

His intervention came as Blairite candidate Liz Kendall denied an allegation that her campaign had gathered information to assist the “purge” of party members.

Hundreds of new members and supporters of the party have been excluded from the leadership vote on the basis that their values are “not consistent with the aims and values of the Labour party.”

Some have accused Labour of a “purge” of leftwingers in order to prevent frontrunner Mr Corbyn from winning the election.

In a letter to Labour general secretary Iain McNicol, Mr Dugher said the party was “allowing the issue to drift, and potentially leaving insufficient time to act.”

He called for an urgent meeting to discuss the potential for “several thousand” Conservative supporters to be lurking in Labour’s ranks.

“We are also concerned that given the party’s limited resources and the effort required to investigate applicants, this could result in the integrity of the contest being called into question, and the outcome subject to legal challenge,” he said.

Yesterday the Morning Star revealed that members of many years standing as well as new supporters had been excluded.

Mr Corbyn’s camp said Mr Dugher’s “internally-faced intervention” was “an attempt to distract the leadership election onto ‘process’ rather than real political issues, such as Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to apologise for Labour’s role in the Iraq war.

“The purely internal procedural obsession falls short of the outward debate the party needs,” a spokesman said.

“Whilst some issues have been raised, we do have confidence in management of the process by elected members of Labour’s NEC and the general secretary.”

An official for Ms Kendall’s campaign told the Star: “We’ve not called for there to be any halt or delay to the process and Liz continues to believe that expanding the party’s membership is a good thing.”

The representative denied allegations that campaigners working on Ms Kendall’s leadership bid had been investigating the credentials of new supporters.

“This simply isn’t true,” he added. “We’re spending our time talking to members and encouraging them to vote for Liz.”

He said the campaign would not have the means to access new membership data “even if this was something we wanted to do, which we don’t.”

A source has alleged to the Star however that an assistant to Kendall-supporting MP Barry Sheerman carried out research into new members. They were said to have done so on behalf of Ms Kendall’s team, but during office hours.

A spokesman for Mr Sheerman’s office said: “That wouldn’t be something that we’d do.

“MPs have been sent the details of new members … but we wouldn’t be able to do that because we’re not party staff.

“We wouldn’t do that in office hours.

“Some of us have at various points volunteered for Liz Kendall entirely under our own steam, but to conflate the two would be fairly unfair.”