Alan Johnson dismisses leadership rumours

“Funnily enough, I was just about launch my leadership bid,” Alan Johnson told a group of about thirty people in a small room above a pub last night, when I asked about the rumours in yesterday’s Telegraph.

His real answer?

“No, no, no, no, no.”

Johnson was there to talk about his first memoir, This Boy, released last year, but he made clear that a split in the Party was never a good way forward: he also made clear that reports that he “privately accepts” Labour would have won had he replaced Brown before 2010 are nonsense. There was “no philosophical issue” with Brown’s leadership that would have made a coup worthwhile:

“If we’d have done that, we would have paid a bigger price. It would have been a disaster. It would have looked like we were saving our own skins.”

One of Miliband’s greatest achievements as leader, he reckons, is that he has “kept the Party together”. It’s no mean feat – he reminded the audience of the splits, with particulae reference to Militant, that emerged in Labour in the 1980s:

“In 1979, the Labour Party didn’t just lose the election, it lost its mind. Suddenly every minister from the previous Government was a traitor.”

Throughout the evening, Johnson’s endearing self deprecation shines through – although it sometimes doesn’t do him any favours. While stories such as the “Monty Python arguments” he’d have with John Prescott about who had the tougher upbringing are charming, the jokes at his own expense gave the media (and unhelpful Party colleagues) ammunition during his short spell as Shadow Chancellor. His crack about picking up an “Economics for Dummies” book allowed one of the most experienced members of the Labour front bench to be painted as not up to the job. With much of the criticism, however, it was difficult to ignore a subtle class element to it – could the working class boy who left school, with no qualifications, at 15 really be Chancellor?

When I ask him what lesson Labour activists can learn from his book, it’s that journey that he seeks to highlight. Not just how his life changed, but what a different society he paints a picture of.

“It’s anti-Russell Brand,” he tells me. “Look what politics can do.”

For anyone feeling uninspired after a flat conference, that might be something to bear in mind.