An inspiring piece. In particular the rejection of tokenism in this campaign. No doubt that was the motive of some of Jeremy’s nominators who were frightened of terminally alienating the Left. Fighting to win is absolutely the only way.
THE JOHN MCDONNELL COLUMN
WHEN ED MILIBAND ANNOUNCED HE WAS RESIGNING AS LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY there were calls for the left to stand a candidate. Jeremy Corbyn and I sat down to calculate whether we had the 35 MPs we needed to nominate to secure a left candidate on the ballot paper. We couldn’t get past 22.
At the Le
ft Platform meeting on the Tuesday after the election defeat, I explained that we couldn’t realistically mount a challenge, but we delegated Jeremy and Kelvin Hopkins MP to check again what prospect there was of running a left candidate. The numbers came out the same and there were those in the Campaign Group who thought it would be better to back Andy Burnham in return for policy commitments.
There was also the question of who would be the left candidate. I made it clear that, having run twice…
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MARTIN UPHAM 