Writing about UNISON's continued silence on the question of who should succeed Tony Blair as leader of our party, Jon [1] says:

The strategy that has transparently been pursued until now has been to pretend that it would be somehow wrong to express a view “until we know who all the candidates are” and thereby to cede to the Parliamentary Labour Party all power to decide upon whether our members who pay the political levy will be offered a real choice.

Leaving that decision in the hands of the Parliamentary Labour Party seems all the more dangerous now [2].

It's bizarre that an organisation founded on democracy and lay member supremacy should tolerate the situation where the MPs get to choose who we can vote for in the leadership election. To not even attempt to influence those MPs into backing a candidate who can give Gordon Brown a run for his money seems to be irresponsible given Brown's role in the public sector pay negotiations [3].