Dianne Abbott wants to be Labour leader

I must say I was surprised. But I've had half an hour to think about it and I say "Go for it, girl!" although she's only two years and a bit younger than me. She may be just the tonic the Labour Party needs. The Miliband brothers are clever. In fact very clever. No intellectual shirkers are they. But I sense the party won't go for either straight away. Ed Balls has gone back to his roots, which is probably a good thing for him. Trying to be the antedote to Mandy and Campbell was never going to work. Andy Burnham is also in the race.

Diane Abbott says, "The other candidates are all nice and would make good leaders of the Labour Party but they all look the same... We cannot be offering a slate of candidates who all look the same. The Labour Party's much more diverse than that." And so is the country. However, I don't buy this multi-cultural thing. It's artificial mumbo-jumbo dreamed up by pseudos and political wonks. If the country was multi-cultural it would be a real mixture. It isn't. It's predominantly white with large enclaves of immigrant communities in the big cities. Solihull isn't multi-cultural. What we have are a number of people from different ethnic backgrounds. Some integrate, some don't. The country is definitely diverse, though. I reckon everybody is in some kind of minority. I'm in about six!

Having a black female Leader of the Opposition might be a good thing. But it must not be because it "looks good" or "ticks a few boxes". Dianne Abbott claims to be a socialist but I have my doubts. I think she's more than likely to be enamoured by pragmatic policies rather than dogmatic ones. Will she win? I tend to doubt it, but she may not come last.