One of the hottest-button issues in the Labour Party right now concerns a territorial dispute over two thousand miles away. The Jewish Labour Movement hustings last night asked each of the candidates whether they would identify as a Zionist. Guido brings you the lowdown…

Thornberry

“I am a zionist”

Starmer

“I don’t describe myself as a Zionist”

Nandy

“I believe that Jewish people have the right to national self determination, that makes me a Zionist.”

Long-Bailey

“I suppose that makes me a Zionist”

Who would have guessed that Long-Bailey would be more willing to describe herself as a Zionist than Sir Keir QC…

Victoria Derbyshire’s trying to make Labour leadership candidates look foolish. In 2016 we learnt Corbyn couldn’t recognise Ant and Dec; now Lisa Nandy has failed to recognise Billie Eilish. Will this make any difference to the leadership race? Absolutely not.

IPSOS Mori has some polling carried out last week suggesting that Momentum’s favoured candidate is the lest popular among voters. Among those who said they knew a great deal or a fair amount, the net favourability scores for Nandy and Starmer were fairly positive; the public, however, has a negative view of Thornberry and rated Becky even worse. Momentum activists obviously will ignore the views of ordinary voters, some of whom are no doubt Tories, wiser heads might want to reflect. As Tony Blair figured out, turning Tory voters into Labour voters is how you win elections…

Lisa Nandy is off Twitter…

“I’ve taken it off my phone, which means I’m slightly clueless about some of the things that people keep asking me about in the Westminster bubble. But it is a lovely place to be [ie, off Twitter].

To be honest, if you start thinking that all of that is real, that’s where you get into real problems. And that has been a bit of a problem for the left in recent years. We spent a lot of time in this sort of hothouse of social media, particularly Twitter, when most of the country, if they are on social media, seem to be on Facebook.

And we talk among ourselves. And we think that we are doing well when we’re not. And we think we’re doing badly when we’re not. And we just haven’t learnt how to understand the public. And we should be out there amongst the public if we really want to understand what’s happening.”

Starmer has stormed ahead in the Labour leadership race, having 48 nominations from Constituency Labour Parties with his opposition far behind:  Rebecca Long-Bailey on 21; Lisa Nandy on 11; and Emily Thornberry on just four. 33 are needed to make it through to the final ballot…

Three affiliated organisations (including at least two Unions) – representing at least 5% of affiliate membership – can alternatively get a candidate through to the final ballot.

So far, ten out of 32 affiliated organisations have nominated candidates to be leader of the Labour Party, five going for Starmer, three to Nandy, and two to Long-Bailey. Meaning so far it’s just Nandy and Starmer on the ballot…

New YouGov polling has found that one third of Rebecca Long-Bailey’s supporters are “completely unwilling to compromise any Labour values, even if this means the party is unelectable.” Only 5% of Keir Starmer’s supporters refuse to compromise with the voters and just 4% of Lisa Nandy’s supporters prefer purity in opposition. Emily Thornberry did not have enough supporters to be polled…

Conversely, just 1% of RLB’s supporters are “willing to see large compromises on some Labour values if this makes the party more electable.” This compares to 16% of Starmer’s supporters and 19% of Nandy’s. See the full results here…