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UPDATE AT 1845GMT: Jack Dromey has won the nomination as Labour candidate for Birmingham Erdington.

ENTRY FROM 1742GMT:
I'm in Birmingham where the Labour Party in the Erdington constituency will announce tonight whether Mr Harriet Harman - ie the Labour Party Treasurer Jack Dromey - has finally been picked as candidate for a decent Labour seat.

Mr Dromey is one of four contenders for the job - all men. And win or lose, it's a good story.

It could be a humiliating failure for Mr Dromey, who has been trying to get a seat for at least 13 years - in between failed bids for the leadership of his union Unite (what was the T+G)...

But everyone we've spoken to thinks he will finally succeed tonight, opening up the wonderful possibility of another husband and wife team on the Labour front bench.

But if Mr Dromey is chosen there will inevitably be talk of a "fix".

In late selections like this the shortlist is drawn up by just three members of Labour's National Executive. (Just like the Conservatives, Labour says there isn't time, with the election so imminent, for local members to decide the short-list).

That argument is completely bogus of course - Labour members in Sedgefield chose their shortlist back in 1983 at a much, much later stage than this - to the benefit of Tony Blair. Everyone knows the reason the national parties start deciding these late shortlists is to parachute in people who might not get picked if the normal democratic processes were applied.

In his recent book the former Labour General Secretary Peter Watt says the party was planning to run Mr Dromey as candidate in Wolverhampton North East had Gordon Brown not cancelled the election in 2007.

The big question local dissidents in the West Midlands are asking is why the National Executive did not impose an all woman shortlist on Erdington, like many if not most of the other winnable seats who are picking Labour candidates at this late stage?

That must have been a real blow to Harriet Harman, who, in one of her other jobs - Equality Minister - is a great champion within the Labour hierarchy of such positive discrimination to advance the cause of women.

Mr Dromey and Ms Harman, respectively Labour's national treasurer and chairman, were officially absent from the NEC's decision-making processes on Erdington, but critics of the process will find it hard to believe there was really a level playing field.