So, Harriet Harman is pressing the case for gender balance in the Shadow Cabinet.

Of itself, that doesn’t give me a problem so long as there is some kind of ideological balance too.

That’s been missing for the past 13 years.

Women and men with alternative perspectives from the view from Number 10 were routinely sidelined and derided.

The ruthless use of patronage by Blair and then, to a lesser extent, Broon shut out people who had valuable things to say.

But that was then.

Now that we are in opposition, the Leader loses the power to appoint the top team. Instead, it falls to the PLP to elect the Shadow Cabinet, every year.

A breath of fresh air, I’d say.

Escape at last from the suffocating democratic centralism of the Blair Brown years.

But it leaves me wondering whether this practice of allowing the PLP to elect the top team will continue into Government - especially if a new 50:50 rule is carried. And if not, why not?

I’d like the views of the candidates on that one.

Elsewhere… Now that Diane Abbott’s name will be on the ballot paper I see she is being written off by the bookies and by the pundits.

William Hill is offering 33/1. Andrew Rawnsley, in a predictable piece in the Observer yesterday, derides the left as a busted flush.

I think he misses the point entirely.

Win or lose, her presence in the leadership race changes the whole dynamic.

If the bookies are indeed right and Diane Abbott doesn’t win but gets a decent level of support from across the Party, why shouldn’t she get a high profile position?

Shadow Home Secretary could be her cup of tea.

Why not?