Estelle Morris, a person of some credibility, and Hazel Blears, a person seeking to recover some credibility, appeared on Today, a radio current affairs programme, this morning to discuss nominations for the Labour leadership contest.

There were, at that stage, three men certain to contest the leadership. All three read PPE at Oxford. All three studied higher degrees at Ivy League Universities. All three, save for the odd bit of scribbling, earned their living as Parliamentary researchers before becoming MPs. All three were parachuted into safe seats. Perhaps the field was a bit narrow, the interviewees suggested.

But they shouldn’t have worried. The field was about to be expanded massively and the cosy consensus of dark blue alumni was to be blown apart.

The former Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, was to achieve the magic 33 nominations within the next couple of hours. Andy Burnham brings something different to the contest – he read English at Cambridge! He also broadened the life experience on offer – not only has he worked advising MPs, he spent 18 months outside Parliament. OK, so six months work as a parliamentary officer for the NHS Confederation and a year pushing paper for the Football Taskforce is hardly running Tesco, but in this life we should be thankful for crumbs, or so I’m told. It didn’t take him long before he found his way back to Westminster before getting himself selected for rock solid safe Leigh.

Andy Burnham doesn’t impress me much. He’s far too accident-prone and looks terrified on television. That’s not leadership material and I won’t be voting for him, but even if he’s not had much of a career he is at least from a background I can relate to – telephone engineer father and receptionist mother, went to an average sort of school. He supports Everton – I wonder what he thinks of their new away kit!

So all in all, though, not a lot better – sadly no women of ability in the field and a mind numbingly narrow spectrum of individuals and views. Estelle and Hazel, pretty much knew that Mr Burnham would make it but still appeared to be worried.

But the major blow for diversity had yet to be struck. Acting Labour Leader, Harriet Harman, had thrown her nomination behind Diane Abbott while telling us that she wouldn’t be voting in the final ballot but wanted to see a woman on the ballot. David Milliband then announced that he would be nominating Ms Abbott, and there she is – the fifth candidate to make it through to the ballot.

So now we have three Oxford boys, a Cambridge lad and a girl who went to Newnham College. Cambridge that is. Sent her kids to private school too. Collects appearance fees and fails to declare them properly. Absolutely ideal leadership material! Massive experience of the real world too – an administration trainee at the Home Office and a spell at the NCCL (during Harriet’s time) and off to various media jobs with Thames TV, the GLC and Lambeth.

So what diversity means in this contest is having a token black woman involved in the contest – even when she doesn’t really command the support of the necessary minimum number of MPs. Anyone who thinks this is a silly or restrictive rule is simply wrong. The job of Party Leader requires that person to LEAD the Parliamentary Party – the support of a reasonable cross section of MPs it therefore a reasonable test of their suitability for the job. The notion that David Milliband, Harriet Harman, Stephen Twigg, Jack Straw, Denis MacShane, Fiona MacTaggart and Phil Woolas actually support Ms Abbott is entirely absurd.

There is one argument for having a ‘ far left’, ‘Bennite’ however you care to describe it on the ballot – that is to ensure that they are subsequently trashed. Trouble is it is a dangerous game. The Labour Party is full of middle class people motivated by Guardian reading guilt. There is a risk, in a field where distinctions are hard to judge that, just as people who don’t really support her have nominated her, others at the grass roots will vote, or give supporting nominations on the ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a woman/black person as leader’ ticket. I say so because I’ve heard this from people who should know better far too often. I do hope I won’t hear it too often this time.

Many feel that the ‘coronation’ of Gordon Brown was bad for Labour - or so it has proved, but many of the same people took part in making that coronation possible are now involved in fixes of a different kind to make sure it doesn’t look like a coronation – and as ever with their own motives. I would welcome an able female candidate. Yvette Cooper, a woman of serious ability, explained in an excellent Guardian article why she wasn’t standing – mores’ the pity.

I haven’t firmly decided who I will vote for in this contest. I have real concerns about Ed Balls – anyone who walks out of the house regularly holding a mug of tea is either posing far too much or suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. So their surname will almost certainly be Milliband – however when I do so it will be on the basis that they are the best candidate from those available, the only basis on which one should ever vote in an internal election. Even if the Milliband I eventually chose becomes leader there will remain significant issues confronting Labour. One of the most important throughout the Labour government was the Party’s failure to connect with what should have been its bedrock support.

The ‘traditional’ Labour vote has been shrinking for some time, nothing new, and it isn’t that New Labour failed to deliver policies that improved the lives and chances of people who shared my ‘working class’ background. However when people from traditional working class estates, from deprived urban areas, from the former industrial cities or in lower paid jobs in the private sector look at the Labour Party they do not see people like themselves, nor anything they believe they could be like. Labour just doesn’t connect on the right levels and the swelling ranks of university-straight from nursery to Westminster village to safe seat career politicians won’t help matters.

When traditional Labour supporters look at and listen to Labour politicians they need to see something that reflects not only their aspirations (aspirations, incidentally that are not and have never been that different to those of middle England) but also which they recognise something sufficiently like themselves, not least because if people are to aspire then they have to be able to achieve. Every time Labour parachutes a Westminster advisor or a minor celebrity journalist into a safe seat over the heads of local activists we make it more difficult for ordinary working people to see that they still have a place in the peoples’ party.