I understand that Tony Blair is now widely expected to announce his
resignation timetable tomorrow, and that this will set the ball rolling
for an election process for a new Labour Party leader. From the
perspective of an ordinary Labour Party member, health worker and union
activist that can't come soon enough.

However, I have a problem. Living in Harborough constituency, I am in
danger of having absolutely no say in the decision as to who becomes the
next leader of my party. I don't have a Labour MP in my constituency,
and neither my CLP, my union nor myself as an individual Labour Party
member have any rights or opportunity to participate in the leadership
selection process unless a sufficient number of Labour MPs from other
constituencies are prepared to nominate an alternative candidate for
leader. I am deeply concerned that Gordon Brown will face a coronation
process, and the Labour Party will have further alienated many thousands
of public sector workers who are currently fighting his Treasury-imposed
public sector pay cuts.

In the NHS, we're being offered a pay rise this year worth just 1.9% - a
pathetic insult to the staff who've had to scrape together the service
left behind after successive rounds of cuts in local provisions, ward
closures and job cuts. This miserly increase - an effective pay cut
given the current rate of inflation - is, we're told, the result of
Gordon Brown's insistence that public sector pay should not rise by more
than 2%. How will the thousands of Leicestershire healthworkers view a
Labour Party that allows him to then walk into 10 Downing Street without
even facing an election? It seems to me that the easier the Labour Party
leadership election is for Gordon Brown, the more public sector workers
(and others) will want to take out their frustrations at the ballot box
in the next General Election - a temptation which will cost Labour far
more damage, and also put at risk the very future of the NHS itself.

So I desperately want to see a challenge to Gordon Brown for the Labour
leadership - not just because I don't think he should get the job, but
also because democracy and the good of the Labour movement generally
demand that there is a contest, a debate and a genuine choice offered to
the Labour Party members and affiliates. As I said previously, I can do
nothing to make that challenge happen, but you can.

I want to ask you to nominate John McDonnell MP for the Labour
leadership, once the process gets underway. John is a committed and
principled politician, whose campaign for the Labour leadership has
inspired party members, including at a meeting in Leicester I attended
last year, and brought new, young, people into the Labour Party -
something that hasn't happened for many years. If John McDonnell were
nominated by sufficient Labour MPs to make the ballot paper, the
campaign would re-invigorate the Labour Party, and prove to the wider
population that we do listen to criticism, to different ideas, and that
we're not the cynical media-driven machine that so many people perceive
Blair's Labour Party to be. But you don't have to intend to vote for
John McDonnell, or even agree with him, to nominate him. You just have
to recognise that the choice should belong to ordinary Labour Party
members and activists, and that the Parliamentary Labour Party should
not deny us the chance to express our views in a contested election.

Labour's had a tremendous step forward in Leicester this week. But
across the rest of the country the picture is far from rosy. The signs
are clear that unless there is some change in the Labour Party we will
face a massive struggle at the next General Election. Going in to that
election with a leader who was 'slipped in' quietly by MPs, avoiding the
need to debate his ideas or policies with others in the Labour Party,
will face the understandable criticism that his would just be a fourth
term of Blairism. Only a genuine leadership election campaign, in which
the Labour vision for the next election can be hammered out in open
debate, can give us a chance to show the electorate that the next Labour
leader is the party's choice, not an annointed successor.

But unless there are sufficient nominations for John McDonnell, the
party won't even be asked to make a choice. Please nominate John, and
give Labour Party members a choice.

Thanks,