Pennine Pennies Dropping

For a man of whom almost no one had heard until today, Michael Dugher seems to have been amazingly ill-liked. The glee at his dismissal is a marvel to behold.

He will of course fill the Sun and Mail vacancies left by the indistinguishable Simon Danczuk.

Such is those newspapers' idea of a Labour politician who is "Northern" and "working-class" (really?), both of which seem to be barely coded ways of saying "absurdly right-wing, mind-boggling self-important, and as thick as mince".

That was also the New Labour machine's idea of such, and it was used to keep out genuinely capable people from the North of England, people who were accurately representative of economic, social and cultural life here.

Thankfully, the age of these offensive caricatures is coming to a long-overdue conclusion. They have apparently been scripted by recent graduates in the West End bowels of the BBC, trying and failing to be Alan Bennett, via Roy Clarke, via Victoria Wood, but without the slightest comprehension that any of those was joking.

But with the fall of Danczuk, and now that of Dugher, the dominoes do at least, and at last, appear to be collapsing.

The wonder is that Jeremy Corbyn ever appointed this person to anything. I mean, why?

In filling Shadow portfolios, first refusal ought to have gone to those MPs who had nominated Corbyn, then to those who had nominated Andy Burnham, then to those who had nominated Yvette Cooper, and then to those who had nominated Liz Kendall.

What are elections for?