A day in the race – July 10th

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

All five candidates were at the Southampton hustings today, and had the chance to stop for some campaigning against the Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne in his own constituency in Eastleigh.

After the hustings, each candidate continued to campaign around the country.

ED MILIBAND had a beer in the sun with his team after the Southampton hustings and was notably happy to learn of the return of wind turbine manufacturing to the Isle of Wight after last year’s Vestas closure. Ed tweeted:

“Have heard great news wind turbine manufacturing “will return to isle of Wight in September”. A year on from Vestas closure very pleased.”

This afternoon, Miliband was in Reading at a meeting for party members. He’ll be watching the World Cup Final with volunteers for his campaign tomorrow.

ED BALLS

has been busy today. After the hustings, Balls wrote a blogpost called “Gove should dig himself out of a hole”. Balls wrote:

“Ever since Michael Gove announced the cancellation of over 700 things have gone from bad to worse. His handling had been botched and chaotic with change after change. On Monday he said local councils which had signed final contracts for new school buildings – what’s called financial close – would see their new schools go ahead. Today it turns out that in Wigan and Bolton, where they have already got to this ‘financial close’ stage, the new schools have been axed too.

I urge Michael Gove to dig himself out of this hole: he should just withdraw all his lists and put a stop these unfair and unnecessary cuts. These are cuts which will blight children’s education for many years to come and which will cost many thousands of private sector jobs just when we need to secure the recovery.”

He’s also made this video about Michael Gove’s “complete mishandling” of the cancellation of the BSF programme:

Like many of us, ANDY BURNHAM will be lifting a glass tonight, according to his Twitter feed. Burnham’s toast will be to:

“Labour Clubs everywhere. Thanks for the NULSC nomination and for keeping the flag flying for Labour.”

I’ll be interviewing Andy Burnham for publication on LabourList next week – do leave questions in the comments below if you’d like to.

DIANE ABBOTT proposed a major house-building programme, rail renationalisation and scrapping Trident today – three concrete policies that will likely form the pillars of the rest of her campaign.

DAVID MILIBAND’s campaign continued its phone banking and house meetings of supporters today in what it called a “Mega Phone Banking Weekend”. Miliband’s Keir Hardie speech was well-received last night, and can be read here. You can also still read my interview with David yesterday.