Dear Harriet

Dear Harriet,

I was really hoping to see the party use this summer to get back to campaigning, defending our record and making the case for a fourth term - reasons why we set up Go Fourth.

After a couple of months where we saw certain sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party questioning leadership and cabinet walk outs, I was looking forward to seeing us put it all behind us and getting back on the front foot again.

Building Britain's Future - Labour spelling out what it will do to get us out of this economic downturn and build a stronger, fairer and more prosperous country - was warmly welcomed by all of us who want to see the party stay in power to continue the good fight for jobs and social justice.

So I read with real sadness your interview with the Sunday Times today.

The headline on the front page said 'Harman: You Can't Trust Men In Power' whilst inside another headline read 'Look Out Boys, I'm in Charge Now.'

I know you don't choose the headlines. But you did choose the words in the interview.

You said: "I don't agree with all male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it's thoroughly bad to have a men-only leadership."

Quotes like this just raise leadership issues once again just at a time when we should all be pullng together and defending our record.

We created two million jobs, made massive investments in health and education that vastly improved these frontline services, met and surpassed our Kyoto targets and are leading the way in securing an historic global climate change deal in Copenhagen.

And under Gordon Brown's leadership, we're leading this country and the world out of a global recession when it's clear the Tories would have done absolutely nothing.

These successes came out of a strong governement of men and women working together.

Success doesn't come from saying all male leaderships are bad and trying to change the party rules to ban all male leaderships. This would change one member one vote - which John Smith and I fought very hard to introduce - to one man, one woman, one vote for leadership elections.

Why take away from the party the right to choose its leaders on the basis of ability? You can't dictate equality in leadership elections. You must let the party decide.

I was beaten fair and square in the 1992 deputy leadership election by Margaret Beckett.

You yourself beat four men to become deputy leader in 2007.

In theory you were elected on merit, not your gender. The system works and I think we should keep it that way.

You had a great opportunity today to use the Sunday Times and the Andrew Marr show as platforms to campaign, sell back our successes and spell out Labour's forward agenda.

This is crucial, now more than ever, after a disasterous June election campaign you were supposed to be running and with a poll today saying we're 24% behind the Tories in the key marginals that you're supposed to be in charge of campaigning in.

Let's talk about what we've done, and are doing, for jobs, social justice, health, education and, yes, equality.

So, as I've said to others before, stop complaining and get campaigning.

I'll save you a seat on my battle bus!

Love,

JP