Skipper

So he's managed to avoid a contest. He has now accumulated so many nominations from Labour MPs(309) that it is now impossible for anyone else to muster sufficient to stand against him. The support of the member for Bradford West, Marsha Singh was claimed by John McDonnell in seeking to muster his required 45 nominations but in the event the MP, (who is male by the way, despite his name) denied he had given it. Another slight oddity of this transition of power, commentators nodded wisely over the resignation of John Reid, suggesting he had no wish to work with the prickly Chancellor, but last Sunday's revelations of the Glaswegian's persistent drunken harassment of a female colleague might have had more to do his decision.

John McConnell had the temerity to ask if Gordon would 'lend' him enough MP names to provide the party with an election but was dismissed with something approaching contempt. It would not even have been a proper fight- the result being a foregone conclusion- but it would have usefully ventilated a few issues concerned with management of the public services, the Iraq War and relations with the USA. The party needs to discuss post Blair issues within its won ranks.

As a party member I feel a bit cheated I have to say; we have few enough privileges but voting in leadership elections once in a decade, I'd begun to think was one of them. If he wanted to side-step such a tiny hurdle, Brown must indeed be as paranoid and as unconcerned with the requirements of democratic debate as the autocrat with whom Sir Andrew Turnbull(he can forget any retirement work for the next two years by the way)compared him.