A day in the race: July 3rd

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

All the leadership candidates were in Leeds again today, for the second union hustings in as many days, this time for Unite. Last night, ED BALLS was at the Denton Labour Club, and Denton & Reddish CLP duly nominated him for the leadership today. Balls and Andrew Gwynne made this video last night:

Balls’ campaign team also released the following video of Ed speaking at the Unison hustings yesterday. It looks like it’s his opening speech:

After the Unite hustings, Balls headed to a Q & A at the Leeds Labour Club this afternoon:

Paul Waugh blogged yesterday about what we’ve been saying for a few weeks: Ed Balls’ campaign has really geathered steam since the nominations process ended.

ED MILIBAND was in Manchester this morning, after attending a Q & A session with members at Manchester Town Hall last night and an event in Liverpool before that. Ed later travelled to Chesterfield, for another Q & A event with party members from across Derbyshire constituencies.

Miliband then travelled to Cardiff by train, where he will attend a members’ event tonight with Julie and Rhodri Morgan and then a social event with members from South Wales.

Miliband’s campaign team have released another video today, which features the candidate talking about his ideas for translating values into policy via a dialogue with the Labour Party. And he says “people have a sense about how deadful this coalition is going to be”. The video is posted beneath what may become a new campaign motto, “There’s no victory without values”:

ANDY BURNHAM tweeted today that his idea of Aspirational Socialism “went down well” at the Unite hustings, and Bryony King was certainly impressed. Burnham was nominated by Stretford & Urmstone last night, in spite of that constituency’s new MP, Kate Green, who had previously nominated Burnham, switched her support to Ed Balls yesterday.

In a post on Burnham’s website, Karen Bruce wrote about a house meeting with Andy and members in Elmet & Rothwell yesterday:

“One issue that members felt strongly about was the scandalous parking charges at hospitals. Andy told us that when he was Secretary of State for Health he raised this issue with Gordon and finally managed to persuade Gordon that in-patients should be given passes that their families could share and use to visit them. Members liked the fact that Andy talked about the many good things that Labour had achieved in the last 13 years. One of these that benefitted people here was the fantastic new hospital at Pinderfields. My Dad has been in the old one frequently and the buildings were so old, it’s a wonder they still stood up at all. Andy visited the new hospital a few weeks before the election and was able to tell those that hadn’t seen it yet how good it was.

Some of the other issues that we talked about were the importance of comprehensive education and re-mutualising Northern Rock. We also talked about Andy’s idea for a proper national care service funded by a fair levy on estates, instead of the unfair ‘dementia tax’ that people are saddled with at the moment, which means working people who are the first in their family to own their own homes are forced into losing almost everything to pay for care in older age.”

As we reported earlier, DAVID MILIBAND was endorsed by the Community union today, adding to the union support already announced by USDAW.

On Pride day, David also blogged on his website about the progress in gay rights made by the Labour government over thirteen years. He wrote:

“We have made great progress on equal rights over the last 13 years. We equalised the age of consent, created civil partnerships, scrapped the homophobic Section 28, ended the ban on LGBT people serving in the military and put in place adoption rights for gay couples.

But these social advances are fragile and need to be protected and built upon. Homophobic bullying is still far too prevalent; especially in our schools. A shocking 65% of LGBT young people experience homophobic bullying at school. Labour’s manifesto at the last election set out plans to stamp this out as well as outlawing discrimination in all its form, in all parts of society.”

Later, David Miliband travelled back south from Leeds with Diane Abbott. Though again misspelling her name, he tweeted:

“Nice journey with Dianne back from Leeds. Don’t tell anyone but we agreed on quite a lot…”

DIANE ABBOTT wasn’t so sure, tweeting:

“On the train back to London from Leeds with David Milliband. Did not agree on everything. But did agree on tuna sandwiches for lunch.”

Diane’s appearance at the Unite hustings was described as “sniping” by Victoria King, who reported on the debate today.