If I were Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry or Lisa Nandy I’m not too sure I would want to be regarded as a token candidate. I think I would rather fight, and win, if I can, the Labour leadership on my own merits. Which would be a good thing, because that is exactly what the party, and more importantly, the country, needs: the best leader labour can produce, because, by God, there is a battle ahead.

On paper Keir Starmer is the man for the job: honed in his previous role of Director of Public Prosecutions, not to mention more recently as Brexit spokesman. There is no doubt he has the qualifications for the job. The question is whether he has the charisma, which only time can tell.

The suggestion that Starmer should stand aside on the ground that “it is time Labour had a female leader,” is disingenuous, and not particularly clever. In one phrase it manages to suggest that not one amongst Mss L-B, T or N could win the election on their own merits, or even in summation, and that Labour is more driven by factional “correctness” than performing its proper role as the most effective Opposition it can be.