Angela Eagle's leadership launch goes from bad to worse: 'I'm not crying now, am I'

There were no great bombshells being dropped elsewhere or dramas unfolding in the Tory leadership race to distract attention away from Angela Eagle during her interview this morning on Today. But the Labour leadership hopeful might have been wishing there had been. It’s a big day for Eagle, with the party’s NEC deciding today whether Jeremy Corbyn will end up on the ballot paper in the leadership contest. Yet after a doomed leadership launch yesterday in which journalists walked out to go and cover Andrea Leadsom’s decision to drop out, things didn’t go much better this morning during her interview with John Humphrys. In a particularly awkward exchange, she was asked whether crying on air, as she had done, was really something a leader should do. She had a point about the importance of being in touch with emotions but then things took a bizarre twist when she told Humphrys: ‘Well look, I’m not crying now, am I?’