On a day when George Osborne is claiming that Cameron's Tories are the 'heir to Blair' and accused Labour of 'lurching to the left' why on earth did Harriet Harman give him ammunation with her skin-crawling unprincipled performance during the Deputy Leadership debate on Newsnight?

It's only fair that we offer our congratulations to Gordon Brown. Gaining 313 nominations is a pretty outstanding effort I'd say so well done to him. <p> A contest would have been the preferred option undoubtedly, but since his only challenger was a man who was completely undesirable to the vast majority of people in this party, we should thank the 313 MP's who gave their nomination to Brown and showed that the hard left no longer own this party - in fact they are weaker than ever. Labour will now continue to be moderate, in touch with reality and hopefully successful.

Nominations as of Wednesday 6pm:

[editor's note, by Jag Singh] 10PM Wed: Hilary Benn is in, John McDonnell is bowing out. More soon, but it's confirmed for sure.

(and it's not Alex who is posting, so that's a double guarantee there :-) )

New nominations update as of 1pm Wednesday:

The latest nominations for the leadership and deputy leadership elections are up.

Shock news on the Politics Show as Reid announces he will stand down as Home Secretary and become a backbencher under a Brown government.

So most of the results are now in and it's clear to everyone that we've done badly in these elections, although perhaps not quite as badly as everyone expected. So where do we go from here?

After the deeply embarrassing last few weeks with regards to our captives in Iran, Des Browne managed to make the situation even worse by allowing them to sell their stories to the media for six-figure sums. Should he resign? In my opinion, yes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1655018.ece

John Reid supposedly will stand in a contest against Brown if Miliband refuses. I, for one, think Reid should be appluaded for such a move.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/08/nlab08.xml

I cannot believe that today, the NEC has decided that if Brown is unopposed in his bid to become leader of the party then we, the ordinary members, will not even get to vote on whether we want him or not. Does this party actually even believe in democracy any more?

The Tories are to launch the biggest crusade for personal morality since John Major's ill-fated 'back to basics' campaign, demanding the right for citizens to tackle teenage yobs physically and calling for a reduction in family breakdowns.

Assuming Gordon Brown will become our next leader and PM, who do people want to see (or think will be) in his first cabinet?