"[The former Labour Party general secretary, Margaret McDonagh had died a few days before] Take her most controversial political battle. She helped exclude Ken Livingstone from the Labour candidacy for London mayor in 2000. As general secretary she took most of the blame for it. He won as an independent and she was accused of being "a control freak". At the time this was seen as a grotesque political error. I saw it differently then. And I do now. Livingstone shouldn't have been the Labour candidate for anything and it was worth losing, and enduring the political attacks, to assert that."