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Labour Party membership is soaring at its fastest rate for 64 years as thousands flock to join the leadership vote.

Figures shown to Mirror Online suggest there are now around 270,000 fully-fledged Labour members - up more than a third from 194,000 before the General Election.

The numbers do not include another 70,000 or so people who've signed up to vote for Labour's next leader without joining the party itself.

The rise looks to be the biggest in any single year since 1951, when Clement Attlee lost Number 10 to Tory war hero Winston Churchill.

Back then 139,000 people flocked to the party, bringing it to its all-time high of more than a million individual members.

(Image: Getty)

Since then numbers have steadily fallen, and never again have they risen beyond 70,000 in a single year.

Membership collapsed in half after Margaret Thatcher won power in 1979 and only topped 400,000 briefly for Tony Blair's landslide in 1997.

Today's estimate would bring Labour membership back to a level it last hit in 2001 - before 9/11 and the Iraq War.

And the total is set to rise further as next week's deadline closes on the leadership vote, with many potential members still going through stringent checks.

Acting leader Harriet Harman has ordered MPs to check their membership lists for infiltrators amid fears separate hard-left parties will back Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour Party membership House of Commons Library / Mirror

Labour rules ban rival party members, and chiefs are keen to weed out members of groups like the Communists or the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).

Tory activists also claimed they'd 'sabotage' the vote by picking Mr Corbyn - but MP Tim Loughton was soon caught out when he tried sneaking in.

Labour rejected his application yesterday but thanked him for his £3 'donation'.

Today's figures suggest there are 70,000 people aside from paid-up members with the right to vote.

(Image: BPM)

Around 35,000 are affiliated supporters through trade unions, while the other half are registered supporters who've signed up to pay a £3 one-off fee.

It's thought these numbers could also rise because the party is churning through the process of verifying who they are.

Len McCluskey of Unite - which backed Jeremy Corbyn - has said 50,000 of his members alone expressed an interest in voting.

However, Labour does not issue official figures so it's not known what the exact totals are.

There are 6 days to register to vote for Labour leader - find out how here.

Jeremy Corbyn has rejected claims 'entryists' are infiltrating the party, insisting they're just 'young people who were hitherto not very excited by politics'.

But Labour grandee Alan Johnson has called on party members to 'end the madness' of flirting with Mr Corbyn and vote for Yvette Cooper.

The former Home Secretary said he's never wanted to lead the Labour party - and neither does Jeremy Corbyn.

"After over a century of male leaders we have an election where the most qualified candidate to lead our party back to government happens to be a woman," he added.

"Let’s end the madness and elect her."