Tales of the expected and the unexpected this morning, as two more names enter the
Labour leadership fray. The first is the expected one: Andy Burnham, who announces his bid in an article for the Mirror. And the unexpected one is … Diane Abbott, who
revealed her intentions on the Today programme earlier. That thud you heard afterwards was the sound of a thousand jaws hitting the ground in Westminster.
Both will, I suspect, do much to improve the contest as a spectator sport. Abbott will have no qualms about attacking the record of the Blair and Brown years. And neither, it seems, will Andy Burnham. In his Mirror article he goes further than the other candidates in criticising Gordon Brown’s decision to scrap the 10p tax band:
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