The Labour leadership- John McDonnell to challenge Brown

Well done John !!

Michael Meacher has finally made contact with reality and stood aside. This has lead to a bit of an outbreak of 'graciousness' . John on his blog :

As many of you may know, Michael Meacher and myself held a meeting today and have together decided that I will stand as the candidate of the Labour left.

I want to use this opportunity to pay tribute to the gracious and dignified speech Michael made at the joint press conference today. Michael and his whole team have already been doing all they can to ensure that our campaign is a success - by calling on his supporters to nominate me, and by offering to do all they can to help.

Other McDonnell supporters such as Susan, Mike , Jon and MarshaJane have also been 'gracious', to differing degrees.Words such as 'honourable', 'Statesmanlike' and 'magnanimous' have been used to describe Meacher.

Pah !! I'm going to be arsey about this . Yes I'm pleased he eventually saw sense . Yes its good he is backing John and I hope he is genuine and backs it up with active support. Yes we all need to work together now. But why didn't he now behave like this months back. John has built a grassroots campaign and has worked hard to do this. His campaign has resulted in some joining, some rejoining and some staying put in the Labour Party. He has kicked the corpse of the left in the labour Party into some sort of life .

So why didn't Meacher support this? Why didn't he and his ego work with John.

Last Thursday McDonnell should have hit the ground running as the only left candidate. Instead we had the farce of sorting out which one stands delayed until today. This allowed the media, and Brown, an open goal. Yep, the left arguing amongst itself again, the unspoken words of the political commentators in the media being piss up, brewery and left.
It made the left look weak, amateurish and unable to agree amongst ourselves . Of course thats true, but it could have done without this.

It is to John's credit how he has handled this. He has performed well in the debates and interviews. He has shown integrity and also managed good humour.

Ok, I'm griping but I am really pleased that John has a shot at getting the nominations. Its not home and dry yet on that score.

On a related note I had a strange start to the day. I was wandering through Waterloo Station a bit distracted, not really looking where I was going , when I almost walked slam bang into a man coming my way. I looked up at the man I just missed barging into to see Gordon Brown looking back at me. First thought was what is he doing wandering round here. I then saw some police and aides behind him. Second thought was how close I was to him and where is Punchie with his nicely polished AK47 when he is needed.

Shame I didn't have my John4Leader badge on.