A Very Sad Day

John McDonnell's nominators were more numerous, and mostly better, than those of some vanity candidate off the telly. Diane Abbott may have had Jon Cruddas and Kelvin Hopkins, but she also had less desirable characters indeed.

John had Frank Field and Kate Hoey. He had the two Labour MPs, one a pro-life Catholic, who are half of all the MPs from the second most rural county in England. He had Ian Davidson, Co-operative hammer both of European federalism and of Scottish separatism. He had no one who was not a fully paid up and card-carrying Eurosceptic.

It is time to start again.