Quote of the day

"To have [the close of nominations] at 12 o’clock on a Monday – we must have been on fucking crack cocaine. You can’t get to anyone, so people were wandering in after a weekend of spending time with their bloody constituency secretary or their leftwing wife, they just fucking wander off the train and hadn’t even had a cup of tea in the tea room by 12 o’clock on a Monday. They go straight down to the PLP office and do something stupid. The people that are around on a Monday morning are the London lot – and for fuck’s sake, it’s the home of the left, it’s all the fucking mayoral candidates and deputy leader candidates."

An anonymous member of one of the three defeated Labour leadership candidates, still fuming about the way that Jeremy Corbyn ended up getting nominated.

The comment appears within this fascinating article tracing how Corbyn went from being a rank outsider unsure he should even stand and then fearful of finishing in an embarrassing last place to the man voted in as leader by a stunning majority. What is particularly amusing is the way it underlines how Tony Blair's pronouncements had the opposite effect to the one intended and actually helped rather than hindered Corbyn's victory, in much the same way that Harriet Harman's declaration that Labour wouldn't contest the austerity measures gave the one candidate on the left who sat outside the shadow cabinet a very timely boost.