LABOUR members who went to court for the right to vote in the party’s leadership contest announced yesterday that they are reluctantly ending their legal battle.

Their decision follows the Court of Appeal ruling on Friday that the party’s national executive committee (NEC) was within its rights to ban 130,000 members who joined after January 12 from voting.

The five members — Christine Evangelou, Edward Leir, Hannah Fordham, Chris Granger and an unnamed teenage member — paid their court costs with money received in public donations.