Daily catch-up: What is the point of Jeremy Corbyn running for Labour leader?

Labour tried his ideas in 1983 and decided they weren’t really helping

1. “To open up the debate.” How soft-headed is the Labour Party still? It “opened up the debate” last time, when Diane Abbott stood as the Socialist Campaign Group candidate, which likes to call itself the Labour left but which ought to be called Labour Friends of the Tories. She won 7 per cent of the vote among party members. Labour has had that debate and Labour Friends of the Tories lost.

But no, here we go again. Abbott got on the ballot last time only because David Miliband lent her some nominations to get her over the threshold, which was then 12.5 per cent of Labour MPs. This time it was 15 per cent and Corbyn still just made it, partly because he is more polite than Abbott, partly because several MPs nominated him with no intention of voting for him and partly because so many new MPs are members of Labour Friends of the Tories. Thanks to Jonathan Jones’s brilliant chart of Labour MPs (below), showing who nominated whom and how they voted in the 2010 leadership election, we can see that 13* of the 2015 intake nominated Corbyn. There is Ed Miliband’s monument.

*Dawn Butler is a retread.

2. We have had that debate. The Labour Party decided some time ago that nationalising things, one-sided nuclear disarmament and praising candidates who stand against the Labour Party are not the best way to help Labour win. Dan Hodges expresses my incredulity well.

3. Philip Cowley has some figures from the British Election Study that show people became more convinced as the election campaign went on that the Scottish National Party would have a role in government. Which, paradoxically, is partly why they haven’t.

4. “The problem is not lack of money but the way the NHS spends it.” Norman Warner, Labour former health minister.

5. To return to the Labour leadership election, because a picture won’t fit higher up, Jonathan Jones’s chart showing which Labour MPs nominated which candidate and how they voted in 2010 (click here for a larger version):

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6. And finally, this just in from Moose Allain:

“I don’ t know if the Moon is the greatest heavenly body, but it’s up there.”