Miliband, Miliband, Balls… and no Cruddas… very disappointing and representing a tiny part of the political spectrum within the party. John McDonnell wants to stand, but the Labour party electoral system means he has to get 34 MPs to nominate him, in the period May 24th-27th in order that Union members or party members actually get a chance to vote for him. Labour only has 258 MPs; many are newly elected; most won’t have a chance to make up their minds.

Whether people want McDonnell as leader or not, it is a high hurdle. You might remember McDonnell stood against Brown in 2007, but because he didn’t get enough nominations he wasn’t allowed to contest it, and Brown was ‘elected’ unopposed. Who now thinks that was a good idea – surely Brown would have been better off having facing some opposition then, even if he’d subsequently won?

I’ve received the following today, and was happy to sign.

Dear friend, 

As you may have heard, John McDonnell has announced his intention to stand for leader. In order to stand, candidates need to be nominated by 32 MPs. However, we only have until 24TH MAY to get the number required. If you want a geuine leadership debate with a broad range of candidates, please support the letter below which will be published in the Guardian on Monday.

Please email me [john4leader@gmail.com] your name, your CLP and/or trade union (if applicable), and any relevant positions as soon as you read the letter if you are in support.

Please also get in touch with your local Labour MP or any Labour MP you think is sympathetic and ask them to nominate John to allow a debate, however they then decide to vote. Nearly every MP has a generic email surnameinitial@parliament.uk, e.g. Gordon Brown would be browng@parliament.uk

Please circulate this email widely. You can help to make this happen!

As a range of Labour party members, councillors, NEC members, trade unionists, activists, community workers and campaigners, we are asking Labour MPs to nominate John McDonnell in order to allow a genuine debate about the future direction of our party.

We are concerned that a contest between candidates with broadly the same views will fail to deliver the wide-ranging policy debate Labour urgently needs following our defeat at the polls.

We welcome John McDonnell’s commitment to a leadership debate based on the policies, not the personalities. We note John McDonnell’s long-standing support for workers’ rights, a peaceful foreign policy, publicly owned services, progressive taxation, an emergency council housing programme, a living wage, and civil liberties. We also welcome his determination that working people must not be made to pay for a crisis that is not of their making, and his opposition to the Con-Dem cuts agenda that will devastate our communities. We want these policies to be given a platform in the leadership campaign.

That is why we ask MPs to nominate John McDonnell, regardless of how they will subsequently vote, in order to allow an inspirational, comradely debate about the future direction of our party and our country.

Michael Crick of Newsnight has an interesting post on this here

I met McDonnell in the early 1990s when I was a student at Brunel. He contested the Hayes & Harlington seat in 1992 and lost by something like 50 votes; winning it in 1997. It’s now a safe seat. I met him again in 2007 to interview him when I was working on the Iraq war – he was one of the ‘rebels’ who consistently opposed the war. It would be really good for the Labour party to have a proper debate about its future direction and how to be an effective opposition.