Labour Leadership Contest...

JUST.

GOT.

INTERESTING.

Taken from that raging leftie machine of death... I mean, the Guardian :-)

Diane Abbott today became the first black person to contest the Labour leadership after a flurry of late nominations secured her place in the race alongside four other contenders.

The leftwing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington will fight for the leadership alongside David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, who were already confirmed as contenders.

She is joined by Andy Burnham, who this morning notched up the last two nominations from Labour MPs he needed to reach the threshold of 33.

Abbott entered on the closing day for nominations with the support of just 11 MPs – 22 short of the threshold. Amid unease that the race would be made up exclusively of white, male, Oxbridge-educated candidates, support for Abbott soared in the final hours before today's 12.30pm deadline when her fellow leftwinger John McDonnell withdrew and key figures such as David Miliband revealed that they were nominating her.

Abbott's campaign had already received a big boost when Harriet Harman, the acting Labour leader, took the unusual step yesterday of nominating her to ensure a woman's name on the ballot paper. As acting party leader, Harman does not intend to cast a vote in the election.

Today, McDonnell revealed he was withdrawing from the contest because he could not secure enough nominations and wanted to ensure the presence of a woman on the ballot.

The MP for Hayes and Harlington, who chairs the Socialist Campaign group, which Abbott attends, made his announcement just three hours before the deadline.

Harman was rumoured to be lobbying party colleagues to lend their support to Abbott in the final hours before nominations closed, with the remaining MPs required reportedly signing her nominations during the final minutes, as prime minister's questions was under way at noon.

Balls had asked MPs who had yet to cast their vote to throw their weight behind Abbott, since he had already received 33 nominations.

Miliband, the shadow foreign secretary, made good on his promise last week to offer his nomination to any candidate if it might make the difference to them appearing on the ballot paper.

In a Twitter message, he said: "Gather John McDonnell pulled out. I'm going now to nominate Dianne [sic] myself. Encourage others to do the same."

Jim Murphy, the shadow Scottish secretary, revealed that David Miliband had lobbied in favour of Abbott. "Good that David Miliband spent morning on phone persuading MPs to nominate Diane Abbott," Murphy said on Twitter. "It worked and good for contest."

Two of the last people to nominate Abbott were Jack Straw and Phil Woolas. Woolas was asked to nominate her by David Miliband. Straw and Woolas were keen to get her on the ballot even though she has condemned the Labour policy on immigration they strongly supported.

Abbott said she would stand out from the other candidates because of her "very different view on immigration", her record of opposition to the Iraq war from the start and her determination to recapture the civil liberties agenda from the Tories.

"The important thing is to have the best possible debate and then to regroup and lead the battle to protect our communities against Tory cuts," she said.

Citing 23 years on the backbenches, Abbott said she knew the importance of taking party members seriously and reconnecting with the party's grassroots.

Abbott, a Cambridge graduate, said: "I have never been a policy wonk. My parents left school at 14 and emigrated here in the 1950s. I am a single mother and I have spent 23 years working at every level in this party."

Confirming the candidates, Harman said: "This will be the biggest and most widespread election of any political party or any organisation in this country. The contest will be open, engaging and energising. It will be a chance to invite supporters to join the party to have a vote."

McDonnell's decision to withdraw from the race means he has now twice been thwarted in his attempt to represent the left in a leadership debate. His attempt to challenge Gordon Brown in 2007 failed after he did not manage to secure the necessary number of nominations.

His latest campaign was marred by his joke earlier this week that he would like to have gone back in time and assassinated Margaret Thatcher, the former Tory prime minister.

Shadow environment secretary Hilary Benn, who backs Ed Miliband, denied the last-minute race to secure enough nominations for Abbott meant the contest had become a shambles.

"It's not a shambles at all," he told BBC Radio 4's The World At One. "It's going to be a good contest. There's going to be an open political debate because we are not just choosing a leader, we are determining the future of the party."


Abbott denied she was the beneficiary of positive discrimination. "Not at all," she told the BBC News Channel. "I have been an MP for 23 years and if, after 23 years, I haven't earned the right to stand for the leadership then nothing counts for anything."

Abbott said her senior colleagues had responded to the mood within the party for a contest with a greater diversity of candidates.

"This isn't an artificial thing," she said. "There is real support out there, both in the party and the public, for the broadest possible slate of candidates and for a proper debate about the future of the Labour party."

Abbott, who appeared on the BBC's late-night This Week politics show prior to throwing her hat in the ring, cited opinion polls which indicated that was the second most popular candidate among Labour voters and the top choice of the public at large.

"My support came from across the party and I believe in the contest I will get support from across the party also," she said.

The successor to Gordon Brown will be chosen by a complicated electoral college system in which three sections – MPs and MEPs; affiliated organisations including trade unions; and party members – each wield one third of the vote.

The postal ballot will be conducted over the summer, with the result announced on 25 September at a special conference ahead of the party's annual autumn gathering in Manchester.

Voters will rank candidates in numerical order of preference on ballot papers, with a "transferable eliminating" system used to redistribute votes until one contender has more than 50% support.

Labour is hoping that interest in the leadership contest will spark a surge in membership applications, with anyone joining the party before September 8 entitled to vote.

Exciting stuff, no? It's definitely a good day for democracy, because this leadership contest was in danger of becoming horrendously boring. As it is, we now have five people running instead of three, two of whom are relative unknowns, and one of whom (Abbott) is on the left of the party, voted against the Iraq War and is a backbencher. Burnham will also make things more interesting, whilst the performance of Ed Balls, David Miliband and Ed Miliband will show just how dead or alive New Labour is.

Also pleased that Harman backed Abbott. Another triumph for Women's Lib, perhaps?

The Evening Stanners