The contest for the Labour Leadership needs to be bust wide open.

So I say well done to Diane Abbott for throwing her hat into the ring.

Labour needs a healthy dose of good old internal Party democracy after a decade and more when everything, and I mean everything, was controlled, stitched up or nailed down.

Patronage ruled.

The rule book was amended, incrementally, over the years, first containing and then snuffing out any possibility of a challenge to the leadership, either on policy or organisation.

When Blair stood down, Broon told the world he wanted a contest. Yet, at the very same time, his people were making it crystal clear to individual Labour MPs it was in their own interest to nominate him.

By continuing to press for nominations for Brown, even after he had secured enough names to get on the ballot paper, the pool of MPs available to nominate alternative candidates got shallower all the time.

The inevitable happened. There was no contest. And we now rue the day Brown was never tested against other candidates with different perspectives.

So, what should happen now?

The NEC must lower the bar for entering the leadership contest. The threshold of 33 MP nominations is still way too high.

We need to see MPs without Ministerial experience, like Diane, stepping forward.

And why not?

Before he became Prime Minister, Tony Blair had never even served on a Parish Council. David Cameron, too, has had no previous Ministerial experience.

And, for goodness sake, let’s have a more leisurely timetable – not this absurdly accelerated one.