‘There are no fit men at this university,” wrote Lisa Nandy in her university newspaper. “The only solution is to quit the manhunt and wait till after uni when you’re back among normal people.” She also posed in what the Mail on Sunday described as a “steamy photo casebook” in bed with another woman. All this makes me like her even more than I already do, and I like her a lot. I may as well say that now, as she is not seen as a big contender in the Labour leadership contest. But she and Jess Phillips seem like people with lives I can relate to.

I don’t have a dog in the contest – not even a miniature poodle – and am aghast at how long it is going to take. Is Jeremy Corbyn simply going to sulk in situ until April? Keir Starmer is safe and dull, and should pass the mic. And Rebecca Long-Bailey seems to be offering more of the same, unable to recognise or accept the absolute failure of Corbynism.

Phillips’ radical honesty is wonderful, but only Clive Lewis (now out of the race) and Nandy, the contest’s only remaining BAME candidate, seem to have any real idea about how big the changes need to be for the party to win back power.

Play Video 3:45 What do the Labour leadership candidates really stand for? – video explainer

Nandy does not want to overthrow capitalism, but she clearly understands that our institutions are not for purpose. The answer does not lie in more centralisation.

“The belief that a remote, monolithic state can solve our problems flies in the face of the reality for those people who most feel the absence of power,” she says. When Nandy talks, you feel she has listened to what her leave-voting constituents have said. Actually listened.

She stood up to Andrew Neil and, while I don’t agree with all her positions, I can see her making the alliances that need to be made.

Smart, clever, thoughtful. Slyly very funny. And a woman who has lived. Will they pick her? Of course not.

• Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist