A day in the race: July 27th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

After an action packed day yesterday as nominations closed, we were back to a more sedate pace today. Now that we’re past the somewhat phoney war of CLP nominations, the candidates are ploughing ahead with contacting supporters – and two candidates in particular are using innovative strategies to contact supporters.

DAVID MILIBAND today emailed his supporters to thank them for their efforts so far, in what seemed to be almost an echo of the message sent out from brother Ed yesterday. In the email, entitled “Your superhuman effort”, David said:

“I am truly grateful for the support I have received from across the party in the last few weeks. I received more nominations from MPs and local Labour Parties than any other candidate and have the support of two trade unions, Labour Students, Councillors, MEPs, MSPs and AMs.”

“But most importantly to me, I have been humbled by the thousands of Labour members and even non-members across the country who have given up their time to volunteer on my campaign – ringing members, data-entering, stuffing envelopes. None of what we’ve achieved so far would have been possible without you.”

“However, I need more help in the next few weeks – we are running phonebanks in every region of the country over the summer – can you spare just a couple of hours to ring members?”

Phone banks are likely to be the battleground of the election from now on, as they provide the easiest way for campaigns to reach large numbers of voting members without needing an organisation in every single constituency.

David’s campaign also released a video of a meeting of their “Movement for change” with the Ugandan community today:

ED MILIBAND was also trying to rally supporters to the phones today – but he look a different tack to David, by texting volunteers who had provided their phone number to his campaign.

The campaign were reporting nearly 200 responses to the text in the first 20 minutes. The campaign said they’re trying to “drive people by phone, not tweets”.

Ed also picked up the support of Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah, who revealed who she was supporting exclusively on LabourList.

ED BALLS today attacked Michael Gove once again, as he responded to evidence given by Partnerships for Schools chief executive Tim Byles at the education select committee. Balls said:

“I’ve spent weeks asking Michael Gove whether he was advised to check his list of school building projects to be axed before publishing it – and he has ducked the question every time.”

“It now turns out that he rejected that advice and made 50 separate requests for different lists and information, so he has only himself to blame for the hasty and botched announcement a few weeks ago.”

Ed’s campaign are also ploughing ahead with phonebanking, with his campaign team reporting that it is “packed” tonight.

His campaign also released the following video to announce his support for the Intern Aware campaign – and in a nice touch it wwas presented by Ed, and his intern:

DIANE ABBOTT today wrote a blog in which she criticised the previous government for not dealing with child dentention. Diane said:

“It is deeply embarrassing to me that it has taken the Lib-Con coalition to start the process of ending the imprisonment of children in immigration detention centres. We should never have introduced the practice in the first place. The termination of this policy is long overdue and it is my hope that we will finally see the end of a policy I have vigorously campaigned against for the last three years.”

“This type of policy should never have happened under a Labour government and I continuously lobbied former Prime Minister to end this practice for a host of reasons. Detaining an individual who has committed no crime for an indefinite period of time is bad enough, but when this individual is a child, you have to question the reasoning behind policy such as this.”

“In planning to abolish child detention, the coalition government has righted a great wrong from its predecessor. They will also be embarking on a policy that I have campaigned on for years and I find it extremely regrettable that my previous Labour government could not do away with child detention sooner.”

ANDY BURNHAM was quiet on the campaign trail today, but his supporters certainly weren’t. Some of them have set up a site called “Backing Burnham“. The site is short on content so far, but this looks set to change. The site’s blurb says:

“Our new leader must be a fresh face, not seen to be tarnished by the mistakes of the previous administrations in the eyes of the public. At the same time he must bean experienced and strong leader to navigate us through these tumultuous political times. He must have the charm and charisma to win back the public we have lost, as well as to survive the 24-hour newscycle in these media driven times. At the same time he must have the ability to listen to members concerns and not be forced into kneejerk policy decisions by the fourth estate.”

“Andy Burnham has all these qualities, and his experience as health secretary shows he can cope with high office. It is time for change. It is time for a new New Labour. It is time for Andy Burnham.”

Whether this is a genuine grassroots campaign for Andy – or some particularly avid followers, we can’t yet say – but we’ll be following this site with interest.