A day in the race: July 22nd

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

A busy day for nominations today – so just a quick report on today in the race as we all catch our breath.

Our current tally (with a few nominations still to be confirmed tonight) shows that in CLP nominations it’s currently : Milibands: 252, Others: 59. That looks pretty conclusive – is the race sown up for one of the Miliband’s?

DIANE ABBOTT forced a major change in policy by eBay, altering their policy on the sale of knives. Responding to the decision, Diane said:

“Knife crime is a terrible problem in London. I feel strongly that they should not relax the rules. I’m glad that eBay has admitted that they made a mistake. But I wonder if they would have done that if I had not raised it in Parliament.”

Later this evening Diane was nominated by her home constituency of Hackney North at an all-member meeting with a crushing first round victory. Turnout was excellent, without over one hundred members present.

Ealier she spoke at a graduation ceremony for Southwald Primary School, and tomorrow she’ll be in Scotland to appear on Any Questions for Radio 4.

ED BALLS today attacked the government after it was revealed that a Tory donor had campaigned for the Sheffield Forgemasters decision to be rescinded:

“This is very murky indeed and needs to be investigated. Ministers must come to Parliament to answer questions about what happened. I was in the House of Commons last night for the short adjournment debate called by the local MPs and it was clear that the government had no answers.”

“Cancelling the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters was a short-sighted and disastrous decision typical of this government’s economic policy which is undermining jobs and growth.”

This morning the Guardian carried an interview with Balls in which he argued that free schools could bring about a “social apartheid”.

DAVID MILIBAND spent the day in Yorkshire, visiting MPs Hugh Bayley and Caroline Flint, as well as steel union and supporters Community. On his way to Scunthorpe he recorded the following audioboo:

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This weekend David will be in the North East at a number of events including a meeting in the wonderful constituency of Blaydon (disclosure, my home CLP) and a BBQ in his constituency of South Shields.

Today his team held a briefing for bloggers with Douglas Alexander – I’ll be writing more on this tomorrow.

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ANDY BURNHAM ad another quiet day today – exactly the same as yesterday. After it appeared his campaign was picking up it’s a real shame to see so little from them today. Andy isn’t doing too badly in terms of CLP nominations, and although he could do with a union nomination, his candidacy is still alive. WHat it needs it to get back to the action they were showing as recently as a week ago.

ED MILIBAND hasalso had a quiet day today – but celebrated a significant number of CLP nominations, as did brother David. Tonight he’ll be on This Week with Andrew Neil. These have been a mixed bag for the candidates so far – so it’ll be interesting to see how Ed performs.

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