John McDonnell

Gordon Brown will not rule out either a Lib-Lab coalition (being campaigned for by Newsnight) or the BBC's long-preferred Alternative Vote electoral system (being campaigned for by The World At One). Only a vote for John McDonnell is a vote against these things, and he should be shouting that fact from the rooftops.

Furthermore, McDonnell has thoroughly conservative, "Middle English" views, as has the traditional Left generally, on Europe, on civil liberties, on the decidedly unconservative neoconservative war agenda, and on neoliberal economics (hardly of benefit to, say, farmers or shopkeepers).

For good or ill, the Irish Question is no longer being asked. I do not welcome into the government of either part of Ireland those who believe the (notably undisbanded) Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland. But I seem to be in a minority of one on that score. And at least John McDonnell was advocating it a very long time before either Gordon Brown or David Cameron.