At Stake, Diane

I would not vote for Condoleezza Rice, and I do not care that she is a black woman. Yes, I would vote for a white man against her if his views were closer than hers to mine, which would not be terribly difficult. Yes, I would have voted for George Galloway against Oona King. Diane Abbott does both her sex and her ethnic group a grave disservice by putting herself forward merely because "there has to be a black woman candidate". What, any black woman candidate? Oona King? Condoleezza Rice?

Abbott falsely told John Humphrys that John McDonnell had conceded and withdrawn, a claim which the Today programme has had to correct. There is no way that both she and he will secure thirty-three nominations. McDonnell, who would certainly have won forty per cent of the constituency section in the immediate post-Blair days and who might even have carried that section at that time, is seeking to identify, and to begin to build, the Labour Left Party to be set free by electoral reform. Abbott merely thinks that one of the candidates should be a black woman, just because.

As for her having sent her son to a private school, that does not compare to Ed Balls's having attended one by the choice of his parents. However, it must be said that Harold Wilson sent his children to private schools while he was Prime Minister. Anyway, the school attended by the Milliband brothers was at least as swanky as that attended by Balls, only maintained at even more direct and generous public expense. Andy Burnham, however, may be a grammar school boy, since those beacons of educational light and hope were maintained by Labour in Lancashire in spite of Margaret Thatcher first as Education Secretary and then as Prime Minister. Someone should ask him about grammar schools. Alas, we probably would not be surprised. But we might, just might, be.