Diane Abbott makes it to 33

Diane Abbott has scraped in sufficient MPs' nominations to contest the Labour Party leadership election. This is Good News. To date there has been only one female party leader of the Big Three (Labour, Conservative, Liberal/Alliance/Liberal Democrat depending on era) and that was the infamous Margaret Thatcher. There has never been a Black party leader. So it would be supercool if Abbott were to win.

There was a suggestion made on Channel 4 News that she is just "window dressing" and her nomination was engineered just so that the Labour Party can point to the token non-White, non-male candidate. And it's true - 4 white dudes are the only other candidates, and David Miliband noinated her and asked others to do the same. Nevertheless, I think that Abbott could end up surprising some people. The Labour leadership process has been rigged to limit the opportunities for non-establishment candidates to run (e.g. the need for 33 MPs' nominations). But Abbott has a good chance of bucking that trend now that she's got to the magic 33.

In the brief clips from the New Statesman hustings, one of the Milibands (I forget which one) talked about values; Andy Burnham talked about how he had genuine working class roots and that "the people of Britain can identify with" him (which is bollocks - the guy's been in Parliament long enough to earn 33 nominations, he's no longer connected to the people in that way). Both of them talked about the need to "reconnect with the electorate". But Abbott talked about reconnecting to the grassroots support, and in my not-so-humble opinion, Labour's support amongst the electorate has dropped off and dropped off precisely because of the way in which Tony Blair's "New Labour" involved isolating the leadership of the party from its core support. I grew up expecting to be a lifelong Labour voter and was proud in 1997 to have voted for them. By 2001, I had had all my illusions destroyed and have refused to vote for New Labour ever since. If Abbott really can reconnect to the core of Labour supporters then she could possibly win back my vote for Labour. (I suppose it's too much to hope that she would reinstate the socialist version of Clause IV that might persuade me to join the Party!)

So far Abbott is talking the talk. I hope to goodness she gets the opportunity to walk the walk, by becoming leader of the Labour Party, Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Parliament - and maybe, just maybe, our next Prime Minister.

Profiles on the candidates are here: I notice that Abbott has first-hand experience of Labour in the 1970s and 1980s, while her opponents are too young to have that same wealth of understanding of where the grassroots come from historically (since, as mentioned, New Labour depended in the end on ignoring the roots!)