Select

There is a school of thought that Constituency Labour Parties still exist. I think that that is obvious lunacy. But there is now a way to prove me wrong. Any MP who nominates the warmonger, war criminal and torturer, David Miliband, should be deselected. The central party machine would never allow this, so it would be over to the CLPs in question to break with that machine and take their place in the re-emergence of the Movement. I say that they cannot. Will they show that they can?

The same goes for the self-proclaimed "New Labour continuity candidate", Andy Burnham, whose pitch is that he comes from a working-class background. That is neither a qualification nor a disqualification, any more than Diane Abbott's blackness or her femaleness. But at least Abbott really is black and female. Burnham is probably relying on the London media's assumption that any Scottish, Welsh, Northern or Midland accent is working-class.

After all, plenty of people are going to have to be deselected, since all existing constituencies are going to be abolished, and the greatly reduced number of them will then deliberately contain far fewer Labour seats than at present. Thankfully, an easy way now presents itself to identify those who simply have to go.

On the question of "diversity", however, this contest is a lot more interesting than most people seem to realise. Two of the candidates are Jewish, one is black, two have Irish Catholic backgrounds (Burnham remains a practising Catholic, John McDonnell does not), so does Jon Cruddas even if he is not now standing, and so does Liam Byrne who has yet to show his hand. Cruddas and Byrne are both Mass-goers. Only Ed Balls is a WASP, with the P strictly cultural, if that. And he is said to be struggling to secure 33 nominations.

Also of note is that all the candidates are English and sit for English seats.