There are, self-evidently, flaws in the way the Labour Party elects its leader. Any competition that Jeremy Corbyn can win twice and that isn’t a raffle is clearly not fit for purpose.

We are something like one full week into the current leadership contest and already it is descending into a VAR-style farce.

Which is to say, the candidates seem to be showing far greater interest in arguing about the rules than in arguing with each other about how best to lead the Labour Party to power.

The first hustings event took place on Saturday, watched by almost no one, and now, watched by slightly more people, the candidates are writing op-eds or otherwise telling journalists that the rules aren’t working.

At Saturday’s events, the five candidates – Rebecca Long-Bailey, Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry – were subject to a range of questions, with all of them having to answer in 40 seconds or less, and not interrogate one another’s responses.

The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Show all 8 1 /8 The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Keir Starmer The former director of public prosecutions undoubtedly has announced that he is standing for the leadership. He is highly-regarded by both left-wingers and centrists in the party. As Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, he played a key role in the party’s eventual backing of a second referendum. Before becoming an MP, he was a human rights lawyer - conducting cases in international courts including the European Court of Human Rights. Launching his bid, Starmer said that Labour must listen to the public on how to change "restore trust in our party as a force for good." A YouGov poll places him comfortably in the lead as the preferred candidate of 36% of party members EPA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Lisa Nandy Wigan MP Lisa Nandy has announced she wil stand for the leadership. In a letter to the Wigan Post she said she wanted to bring Labour "home" to voters in its traditional strongholds who have abandoned the party. Nandy went on to say that she understands "that we have one chance to win back the trust of people in Wigan, Workington and Wrexham." A YouGov poll shows that Nandy is the first preference for 6% of partymembers. Getty The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Rebecca Long Bailey A key ally of the current left-wing leadership of the party, the Salford & Eccles MP is viewed in some quarters as the natural successor to Mr Corbyn and describes herself as a “proud socialist”. Highly regarded by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. She won also won plaudits for her performance filling in for Corbyn both at prime minister’s questions and during the general election debates. The shadow business secretary grew up by Old Trafford football ground and began her working life serving at the counter of a pawn shop. Launching her leadership bid, Long Bailey said the party needs to make the positive case for immigration as a "positive force." She also broke with Corbyn over Trident, saying "If you have a deterrent you have to be prepared to use it." PA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Angela Rayner - Deputy leadership Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has joined the contest for deputy leadership of the party. After ruling herself out of running for the leadership, the Ashton-under-Lynne MP launched her bid for deputy warning that Labour faces the "biggest challenge" in its history and must "win or die." She is close with leadership contender Rebecca Long Bailey PA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Rosena Allin-Khan - Deputy leadership Shadow sport minister Rosena Allin-Khan said Labour need to listen with "humility" to lost voters as she launched her bid for the deputy leadership. Writing in The Independent, the MP for Tooting refelcted: "We shouldn’t have ignored the warning signs in Scotland, and now we’ve paid the price in northern England, across the midlands and in Wales." PA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Dawn Butler - Deputy leadership Shadow women and equalities secretary Dawn Butler was first to announce her bid for the deputy leadership. The Brent Central MP has served in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet since 2016 PA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Ian Murray - Deputy leadership Labour's only MP in Scotland said that the architects of the party's "catastrophic failure" in the December election can not be allowed to lead the party forward PA The battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader Richard Burgon - Deputy leadership Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon is standing as a continuity candidate, flaunting his loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn and saying it is wrong to blame the current leader for the election defeat PA

It lent to the occasion a sort of Blind Date with Cilla Black feel, only with very thinly veiled sexual innuendo replaced with soundbites on everything from homelessness and food banks to antisemitism.

Phillips, who by her own admission struggled with the format, has now instead written an op-ed for The Guardian, decrying the format and pledging to do things differently. “What galls me the most is the triangulation,” she wrote. “The lines planned to reach different parts of the membership of the Labour party, all while talking about the end of factionalism.”

She is, she says, going to do things differently. She is, she says, “going to say what I think”.

Nandy also thinks the 40-second rule needs to go, that it is standing in the way of the “full and frank discussion” the party needs to have with itself, in this, the “most important leadership election for generations”.

What Phillips and Nandy have in common (as Phillips has admitted) is a vanishingly small chance of victory.

The only candidate currently polling beneath either of them is Thornberry, who has been more circumspect about the 40-second rule. “Formats are formats,” she said, and she, by her own view is more used to getting her point across in “30 or 60 seconds”, having occasionally stood in for Corbyn at PMQs.

There is, in a certain sense, no crime in being compelled to condense an argument to 40 seconds. The general public rarely listens to anything longer. “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,” takes less than three seconds to say. “Get Brexit done,” less than one.

Corbyn has regularly given speeches lasting more than 20 minutes that contain not a single point of argument at all.

But the question, really, is not the length of the answers to the questions. It is whether the party is serious about not avoiding the questions it must ask itself.

Losing parties, of which Labour is now a serial one, have an unfortunate habit of getting out of sync with their own chances of renewal. Corbyn and Corbynism were comprehensively rejected by the voters, at the same time as a handful of loyal Corbynista outriders were returned to Westminster.

On Friday night, Long-Bailey launched her leadership bid with the assistance of one of Labour’s brand new MPs, the 26-year-old Zarah Sultana. Both in the maiden speech in the House of Commons and again on Friday night, Sultana took the opportunity to state without a hint of embarrassment that, “Together, we can take wealth and power from the Bullingdon boys and invest it in our communities.”

Few things could make the question facing the Labour Party clearer. Four years of Corbyn has ended with Labour voters, in Blythe Valley, Don Valley, Sedgefield and absolutely everywhere else in between voting *for* a Bullingdon boy. That is the direct cause of their dismal failure. And yet the Corbyn project still has no new tunes to spin.

The party’s own polling shows that only two people can win the contest, Starmer or Long-Bailey. Reality, in other words, or continuity Corbyn.