An email arrived this morning, while I was reading some interesting discussion on the fall-out from the elections and trying to work out how to make the unions move fast enough in the right direction to stave off a Tory victory at the next General Election. It didn't exactly inspire me, although I suppose it was supposed to.

It came from the Labour Party, and was titled, Campaigning events in your area. A good start, I thought, since the Labour Party has done eff all actual campaigning in my area for over a decade. So rather than assigning it to the spam folder, I read on, enthusiasm rapidly waning:

What would Nye Bevan be thinking, if he could see a Labour government driving through a privatisation agenda into the heart of the National Health Service? Of course there's been a conflict between NHS and private profit ever since the birth of the NHS saw Bevan compromise with hospital doctors over private beds in NHS hospitals, and Bevan was always a 'realist' rather than an 'idealist'. But that didn't mean he did not have principles, something which today's crop of Labour ministers seem to be devoid of completely.

So this is how Gordon Brown plans to repay unions like UNISON which tried to ingratiate themselves by nominating him in the leadership election shortly after it was clear that he wouldn't face any competition: by preventing them from embarrassing him at future Labour Party conferences. Why am I not surprised?

The BBC news ticker on my desktop tells me that John McDonnell has announced that Michael Meacher is to withdraw his candidacy for the Labour leadership, and that this means John will get on the ballot. If true, that's excellent news, although clearly there is some confusion elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, I've been reading another review of the Fabian Society debate last night.

I knew someone would have some live reportage from the Fabian Society hustings tonight. I just didn't know who. I should have!

Along with 340 other Labour activists, including MPs, MSPs, councillors, union branch officers, reps and members of both the Labour Party and a myriad of affiliated organisations, I signed this letter which appears in the Guardian today. There is further evidence that John McDonnell, not Michael Meacher, should be the left's challenger to Gordon Brown in the news that Scotland UNISON's Affiliated Political Fund, or Labour Link, committee voted unanimously yesterday to support John.