Stop the nominations!?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Stop the nominations!

Or so says a tweet @LabourList just received from Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society.

What Sunder means, of course, is that continued nominations for the three candidates who have already secured the support of enough MPs to be on the ballot are now only serving to keep the contest narrow, when most of the party seems to want it to be broad.

Sunder even drafted a letter to David, Ed and Ed at the weekend, asking that the leading candidates seek no new nominations; he’s had acknowledgements, but no firm responses. And last week, I too signed a letter calling for MPs to share around their nominations more equally.

Certainly, there’s a lot of support for addressing this problem – though with just a week before the close of nominations time is running out.

David Miliband today pledged to give up his own nomination to one of the candidates still struggling to get on the ballot. An honourable gesture, but ultimately meaningless. David Miliband already has the support of twice as many MPs as he needs, yet continues to shout about attracting new support, including Alistair Darling’s last night. With Andy Burnham on 19 nominations, John McDonnell on 7 and Diane Abbott on 3, will one show nomination make the difference? Evidently not.

Tonight, Compass have started a new campaign to ensure a representative Labour leadership contest. They’re asking members to fill in a form to email those MPs who have not yet nominated to spread their votes “tactically”. I think there’ll be a lot of takers.