Today is the last call for nominating candidates in the Labour leadership contest. At noon, the nominations will close and we’ll know then whether it’s going to be a three or four horse race. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall are on the ballot paper so it’s now a question of whether Jeremy Corbyn can find the extra 17 MPs to meet the 15 per cent threshold. By our calculations, there are 42 MPs still to declare, so it remains very possible that a late surge will push Corbyn towards the 35 nominations needed to make it onto the ballot
Once nominations are closed, the leadership race is thrown into the hands of Labour party members. This is also the point when the campaign is likely to become dirty. The first signs of this can be seen in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, which reports some extraordinary comments from a source close to Burnham and Cooper, explaining why Liz Kendall’s campaign is over before it has even begun:
‘We are now seeing the end of Taliban New Labour.
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