Keir Starmer is looking increasingly prime ministerial – the others must step up if they're to stand a chance

Along with Nandy, he was the candidate who caught the eye most in the two TV debates, writes Andrew Grice

Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign has been reported to the Information Commissioner (Getty)

When Labour’s leadership election began, Lisa Nandy phoned Keir Starmer to say the rival candidates should “look after each other” at their hustings around the country because such contests can get “really brutal”.

The four contenders all declared they were “friends” at the close of a 90-minute debate on BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme today. Although those of us in the media would naturally prefer blood on the studio floor, there were some small but important differences between the friends and rivals during the show and the first televised debate on the BBC’s Newsnight last night.

Lisa Nandy used both well to display her unique selling point: she has not been in the shadow cabinet for the last three years, and so can escape responsibility for Labour’s disastrous election result. She pointedly accused her three rivals of not “standing up and speaking out” on the party’s failure to tackle antisemitism. She said she did so before leaving the shadow cabinet in 2016 after, she claimed, Jeremy Corbyn’s team made clear it would wage “factional war” until its opponents had been crushed. Emily Thornberry outlined a similar experience with Corbyn’s office, saying she was told to keep out of the antisemitism controversy. Not a good look for Team Corbyn.