I said a few days ago (Not Blears, surely?)that I might have been wrong about Hazel Blears. I had thought she was the worst possible person of the six candidates to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party but that, having watched them all jump through David Dimbleby’s hoops, I decided that merely being intensely irritating made her the best of a lack-lustre bunch.
But it is Harriet Harman who has been elected and Blears came last, beaten even by Peter Hain. Whether this is just a collective joke by the party membership or an unforeseen consequence of an arcane voting system is not clear.
Gordon Brown leapt up to reassure us that Harman would not be Deputy Prime Minister, which is a small mercy to be grateful for. Two-Planks Prescott followed by Flopsy Fluffball would have been too much to bear.
It will be interesting, however, to see how a former activist on (and Legal officer for) the Council for Civil Liberties copes with a senior position in a party which has slid downhill towards illiberal authorianism so quickly.
