A day in the race: June 25th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

All of the candidates were more active today than they have been lately. One candidate stepped up their online operation, whilst another secured the first Trade Union nomination of the race. Ahead of tomorrow’s North East hustings, the candidates have also started heading North and meeting members across the nation from Birmingham to Durham.

The ANDY BURNHAM online operation has lept into life, and this has helped to fill in some gaps in what had seemed a strangely quiet week for the shadow health secretary. Last night the Burnham campaign emailed supporters, and Kevin Lee (the Andy4Leader campaign director) laid out his reasons for supporting Burnham, particularly that he is:

“someone rooted in Labour’s values…. someone with the mettle and moral courage to stand up for what they believe in”

In a blog post today that explained his whereabouts over the past week, Burnham also laid out his plans for the weekend – and as has been the case for the past few days, a football mention wasn’t far away:

“Looking forward to the weekend – in the North East on Saturday, meeting volunteers at my Campaign Office in Manchester on Sunday morning, a garden party in Stoke and a Meet Andy event with members in north Manchester on Sunday evening (after the football of course!)”

Burnham also continued his attacks on Tory Health plans, saying, “In the space of six short weeks Andrew Lansley has taken health policy from order to complete chaos.”

DAVID MILIBAND had by far the busiest day of any of the candidates today. This morning the Mirror published an interview with the elder Miliband in which he referred to Cameron and Osborne as “updated Thatchers in trousers.”

This morning he received the supporting nomination of the shopworkers union USDAW, before visiting them this afternoon to say thank you. While in the North West, Miliband also took part in a livechat for Manchester Evening News, and to cap off a frenetic day of media appearances – he was jokingly offered a job as a commentator on Radio 5.

Tomorrow David’s team will be running a special phone bank with Blur drummer and former PPC Dave Rowntree – which on Glastonbury weekend isn’t bad going.

ED BALLS followed up his assured performance on Question Time last night, concentrating his fire on the new government’s free schools policy – including that private schools could become free schools funded and subsidised by the taxpayer. Balls said:

“That would be a private school subsidy for a few, paid for by everybody else. It would be wrong at the best of times, but when the Tories are already planning huge cuts to the schools budget it would be deeply unfair.”

Today Ed was in the West Midlands at a community sports day in Dudley with local MP Ian Martin, before meeting party members in Sandwell and Birmingham.

ED MILIBAND has been in the North East today ahead of the leadership debate tomorrow. This afternoon he was in Durham, where he visited St Margaret’s care home to talk about work and pay issues, and later this evening he’ll be in Newcastle North.

Ed’s campaign team have also been urging people to take part in their email campaign to contact Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes, which the campaign says has generated hundreds of emails so far.

DIANE ABBOTT was out at the Olympic site at Stratford early this morning, after a less convivial than usual evening on the This Week sofa yesterday.

Other than that though a quiet day for Diane. However there has been some online chatter this afternoon about whether or not last night’s performance against Andrew Neil will hurt her campaign. My feeling is that it will depend on how many people see the interview, because it certainly wasn’t good for Diane – although no doubt Neil will be equally as ruthless with the other contenders in the coming weeks.