Sebastian Payne

Tonight’s Newsnight Labour leadership debate is a sink or swim moment for Liz Kendall. So far, there has been a lot of talk about Kendall's candidacy and her potential to be a reforming leader. But until now, there hasn’t been a lot of proof to back that up. Some have been whispering that she doesn’t perform well under sustained pressure; others have likened her supporters to the Taliban. Either way, tonight’s debate is her opportunity to show that she is credible — as well as hopefully answering the crucial question of what, if anything, she stands for. It’s a mistake to label Kendall as just the Blairite right-wing candidate. Again, she has the potential to have far broader appeal, what could be described as 'New with a touch of red.

Jeremy Corbyn is adding some unlikely excitement to the Labour leadership contest. Although he does not have enough MPs yet to make it onto the ballot paper — he needs another 16 nominations at the time of writing — there is still a sense he might make it into race. As I wrote earlier in the week, the other campaigns are open to ‘loaning’ Corbyn some of their nominations if he nearing the magic 35 threshold. Typically, Corbyn is sticking to his principles and has told Total Politics he is not keen on the idea of other candidates helping him: ‘I’m not particularly into charity nominations. I want to see a proper debate within the party.

Gordon Brown has popped up in the Guardian today to warn that the evil Tories are going to destroy the Union. The former Prime Minister laments in an op-ed the government's attitude towards Scotland and calls for a ‘constitutional convention’ to figure out the ‘rights and responsibilities of citizens’ in different parts of the Union. If we don't, Brown warns, the Union is in big trouble: ‘No union can survive without unionists and, after an election in which, to head off Ukip, the Conservative and Unionist party presented itself as the English Nationalist party, it is clear that the union is on life support … It is London’s equivocation over Scotland that is becoming the greater risk to the UK.

Occasionally, there are moments when politicians of all persuasions welcome a result. As David Cameron noted at PMQs this week, Naz Shah’s victory over George Galloway in Bradford West was one of these moments. This morning’s news that Labour's John Biggs has been elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets is another. Biggs won decisively, with 32,754 votes (including second preferences) to 26,384 votes for the independent Rabina Khan, a former member of disgraced mayor Lutfur Rahman’s cabinet, who stood as an independent. There was clearly tactical voting, with Biggs taking an impressive 90 per cent of the second preferences. This result will hopefully mark the end of the toxic Rahman era.

David Miliband is falling rapidly out of favour with his former colleagues, thanks to his constant critique of Labour. John Prescott spoke for many in the party on the Daily Politics today, where he described Miliband's interjections on Labour’s future as ‘terrible’: ‘He should shut up. We’ve gone through that period. The Miliband period is now gone. We’re not looking to a period where he now emerges now as another Miliband interpretation; I don’t think that’s possible. ‘He did shut up during the elections though there was enough hints to say that he wasn’t happy. I’m not happy! He's now become a Blairite, but when he was with me he didn’t want to be associated with the Blairites.

Tony Blair popped into King's College London this morning to discuss ‘how to run a government’ with his former adviser Michael Barber. Amongst other things, the former Prime Minister discussed David Cameron’s efforts to remodel No.10 to make it more Blair like, as James reveals in his column this week. But he made no attempt to disguise the fact that he thinks structures are no substitute for the ‘guy’ at the top being on the case 24/7 when looking to deliver change: ‘It works when you have the clearest possible sense of priorities and what you want to achieve … you’ve got to have the Prime Minister’s authority behind this all the time.

Will 2067 mark the point when Christianity dies out in Britain? In this week's View from 22 podcast, Damian Thompson and Freddy Gray discuss this week's cover story on the crisis facing Britain’s churches. Is the rise of secularism a problem for just Anglicans, or all Christian denominations in Britain? Is the Church of England particularly to blame? What comparisons are there to what is happening with religion in America? And if these projections are correct, will Christian values continue to underpin British society, long after the religion itself disappears? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson reveal what David Cameron did on election night.