Wednesday 17 January 2018

Piece of Mind

"There's no such thing as the Hard Left," its obvious candidate to succeed Jeremy Corbyn told me when I asked him whether he considered himself part of it. Of course, that is always the sign. But he has the wrong chromosomes, so the scramble is on for a "Stop Thornberry, Stop Rayner" candidate who has no such disqualification.

I still say that Angela Rayner is the candidate with the right appeal across the party, across the Movement and across the electorate. But if a candidate is to be fielded from her left, then it ought to be the one who had gone from an 11-16 comprehensive school (the more middle-class and selective ones are always 11-18), via a Sixth Form college, to Cambridge, qualification as a solicitor, election to Parliament, and rapid appointment to the Shadow Cabinet.

Richard Burgon is a success story of the state education system, and we need to hear a lot more of those, since there are a lot of them about.

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