Left Out?

The Hard Left is presumably planning a late surge, since hardly any of them have nominated anyone up to now. Diane Abbott's only supporter other than herself is an immensely ambitious arch-Blairite who, in signing her forms, has jumped the shark when it comes to trying to distance himself from his own past with a view to the Leadership Election after this one. Note that he has nominated the Campaign Group member guaranteed not to make it onto the ballot, rather than the one who might have done if she had not indulged her vanity in a spot of splitting. No risk that the signature that sent John McDonnell's name out to the Electoral College might read "David Lammy". Come on, there are limits.

John's is by far the most balanced list of nominators, stretching from Jeremy Corbyn to Frank Field and Kate Hoey. If, as one would expect, Ian Lavery joins the pro-life Catholic Ronnie Campbell, then John will have signed up both Labour MPs, comprising half of all the MPs, from the second most rural county in England. Clearly, John really does believe in a broad-based party, not just in the sense that it still has his own lot in it, but in general. However, that First Past The Post definition of such a thing will soon be obsolete. Still, discounting Abbott as we should, he is the only candidate to have been an MP at the time of the Iraq vote and to have voted against. And he is probably the only one to have little or no time for the EU. He is certainly the only one to have been nominated by no one who has.

Meanwhile, the question niggles of why probably Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband, and certainly Ed Balls or David Miliband, wants the job at all now that chauffeur-driven Ministerial cars have been discontinued. Why have they any remaining desire to return to office? The only thing that has ever been of the slightest interest to Balls or to Miliband Major, at least, has been the trappings of office. Like so many people with degrees in it, they have so little interest in politics that they could pass for lobby correspondents.

All specific policy proposals are "undeliverable", or "outdated", or what have you. Consider that after 13 years, even John Smith's promise that employment rights would begin on day one of employment, and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, had never been delivered or even attempted. Nor, for that matter, had anything else since 2001 at the latest. Nor was terribly much before that. Instead, we were expected to furnish endless free banquets and luxury holidays to people whose private wealth could have paid for them anyway. For example, David Miliband and Ed Balls.