On the evening of 16 May 2007, John McDonnell conceded defeat. The left-wing Labour leadership candidate had won only 29 MP nominations, 16 short of the number he needed to make the ballot. “I know how angry many of you are, but I would ask you to stay in the party and fight,” McDonnell wrote in a letter to his supporters as Gordon Brown became the new Labour leader – and thus the prime minister – unopposed. “Don’t mourn, organise,” McDonnell concluded.
“It’s pathetic,” the BBC presenter Andrew Neil said to the Labour MP Diane Abbott on This Week. “Your lot can’t even muster 45 backers.”
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