Diane The GOAT?

Would she be elected to the Shadow Cabinet? If not - or even if so, these days - then an advisory role with the Coalition beckons. She was less left-wing than David Blunkett was when either of them could really have been so described, a generation ago now. Blunkett, a prominent supporter of the same Andy Burnham who decries Alan Milburn and John Hutton, is said to be next in line for such a post.

Abbott has never been a Trotskyist, whereas Milburn has never been anything else, and has now as good as brought back to the Cabinet table the definition of New Labour, namely the shift in academic Marxism from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means, but with the ends entirely unchanged: the withering away of the family, of private property, and therefore also of the State.

If such are the GOATs favoured by David Cameron, then what hope Diane Abbott? Well, the John McDonnell and then Ed Miliband-supporting Frank Field is welcome, so why not this Euroceptical, pro-Commonwealth advocate of traditional education, old-fashioned manners, ancient civil liberties, and immigration from English-speaking countries with close historic ties to Britain? What it does with her after next month is now each side's test of its commitment or otherwise to those principles.