Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has said he will not be standing for the Labour leadership and has given his backing to the Blairite favourite, Liz Kendall.
At a speech in London, the TV historian admitted he had been unable to secure the backing of the 35 Labour MPs needed to run.
"It is also clear to me that in trying to gather the names I need, there is a real risk that I might help restrict the choice for the party," he said.
"That is not a risk I am prepared to accept. Instead, I am offering my endorsement to my colleague, Liz Kendall."
Mr Hunt said that from the soundings he had taken with the party, most Labour MPs appeared to have made up their mind who they would be supporting within days of the general election defeat.
"Like other potential candidates in recent days I have made a lot of calls to potential supporters among my parliamentary colleagues. I found that the bulk of MPs are already committed to just a couple of candidates," he said.
"It is surprising that the nomination process to select a leader for at least the next five years appears to have been largely decided within at most five days of a devastating general election defeat."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article