As balloting began in the election for leader of the Labour Party, key figures around the two main contenders – David Miliband, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, and his brother Ed, the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – both claimed they were confident their man would win.
After a long, hard summer spent campaigning with the other candidates at hustings up and down the country, as well as speaking at Constituency Labour Party and trade union meetings and giving dozens of media interviews, most of the talking is over and the voting has started.
David Miliband appears to be just ahead, on first preference votes as well as nominations from CLPs and Labour MPs, which is why his supporters believe he will win. Ed’s team, on the other hand, thinks he will come through on the basis of second preference votes. Under party rules, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated until one has a simple majority of more than 50 per cent of the total votes cast.
The publication of Tony Blair’s memoirs threw a stone into the political pond. But Mr Blair – and Lord Mandelson – seemed unclear as to whether their endorsement of David Miliband would be a help or a hindrance to their protégé. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband positioned himself very clearly to the left of his brother in an article in The Observer.
Ed Balls, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, and the candidate who has spent most time since the election directly taking on the Tories, put down a marker to be the next Labour Chancellor with a powerful speech on the economy.
Speaking at Bloomberg, on the same platform as George Osborne a week before, he said: “I believe that – by ripping away the foundation of growth and jobs in Britain – David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne are not only leaving us badly exposed to the new economic storm that is coming, but are undermining the very goals of market stability and deficit reduction which their policies are designed to achieve.”
He attacked the Tory-Lib Dem policy of “cutting billions of pounds from public services and taking billions of pounds out of family budgets this financial year and next” as “not just unfair, but both unnecessary and economically unsafe.”
Raising the ghosts of “Keynes in 1925 and 1931 and Alan Walters in 1990”, he said Mr Osborne’s plans have “about as much economic credibility as a pyramid selling scheme”.
Mr Balls added: “On the grounds of prosperity and fairness Labour needs a credible and medium term plan to reduce the deficit and reduce our level of national debt, but only once growth is fully secured and over a markedly longer period than George Osborne is planning” and set out “the building blocks of an alternative economic strategy rooted in economic history as well as our country’s shared values”.
Voting in the electoral college – split into thirds between party members, MPs and trade union levy payers – began on September 1. The winner will be announced on September 25, on the eve of this year’s Labour Party conference in Manchester.
