A day in the race: July 8th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today the first financial declarations of the campaign were made – and showed one candidate in a commanding lead. Meanwhile all of the candidates were asked for their opinions on public sector pensions, and one candidate launched a new campaign.

The DAVID MILIBAND campaign today unveiled the extent of their fundraising today – announcing that they raised in excess £185,000. David’s fund-raising dwarves the sums raised by the other candidates, having raised over six times the amount raised by Ed Balls and in excess of ten times the amount raised by Ed Miliband. Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott were not listed in today’s figures. This sum doesn’t even include 94 donations of less than £1500 (which don’t need to be declared) and funds from USDAW and Community which will be declared in the August Electoral Commission disclosure.

In a statement on his Website, Miliband said:

“I am very grateful for the generous support I’ve received since the start of the campaign. It’s very humbling that people are giving up both their time and their money to help me in my bid to become the next Leader of the Labour Party. I know this comes from their love of the Party.”

“We know that at the last election the Labour Party would have benefitted from having a bigger fighting fund to take on the Ashcroft millions – now that he’s finally given up his non dom status we know that his money is here to stay. And we have to get the Party’s finances back in order to combat that.”

Later today Miliband contacted supporters to talk about his “movement for change”, encouraging more people to take part in the organisers training that his campaign are organising:

“I am committed to this because I believe that reconnecting our Party back to its people, building change from the grassroots up, is one of the most important things we should be doing in the coming months. We have to rediscover our radical organising tradition in order to build a movement for the future. We have to rebuild Labour as an open, organising, campaigning ‘Movement for Change.'”

Today all of the candidates were asked for their views on public sector pensions by unions together. David defended Labour’s record on pensions, but broadened his answer out to say:

“We should stand up for good public sector pensions and good privates sector pensions. My priority is tackling pensioner poverty and enhancing pension provision in our country, not engaging in a race to the bottom – and Labour’s manifesto is the right place to start.”

ED MILIBAND gave his second interview in as many days with a blog today. Speaking to Left Foot Forward, Ed outlined his aims for income equality, saying:

“we were only focusing on the redistribution part of it and we weren’t willing to talk about the top, so we weren’t willing to say we were for a higher top rate of tax, we weren’t willing to say actually there is an issue about how much chief executives pay themselves and how much of it is spread to the rest of the people in the organisation, and just paying themselves what the market will bear is not acceptable.”

Meanwhile, on pensions Ed defended the agreement between the TUC and the previous government:

“It is a fair way forward, protecting the pensions which public sector workers have worked hard for and ensuring they are sustainable in the long-term and I will stand by it just as I stand by our public sector workers.”

ED BALLS continued his campaign against school cuts (and Michael Gove) today. Appearing on BBC news this morning, Balls said:

“I think Michael Gove needs to withdraw this list now, think hard, and then come back with new proposals and I think his apology shouldn’t just be to members of parliament, he’s got to apologise to hundreds of thousands of children, parents, teachers, governors who have all worked hard to get these new school plans in place, suddenly find out they are cancelled at the cost, not just of hundreds of thousands of jobs but also the hopes and expectations and education of children right across the country.”

This afternoon Ed followed this up by launching a new campaign, “Save our Schools”, including a lobby of Parliament on July 19th. Announcing the campaign, Ed said:

“These are unfair and unnecessary cuts – they will damage opportunities for children and young people and cost many thousands of jobs in the construction industry just when we should be supporting jobs and growth in the private sector.”

On public sector cuts, Balls used the opportunity to create a dividing line with the government, saying:

“the Tory/ Liberal attacks on public sector pensions are hypocritical, unfair and unwarranted – at worst they are an excuse for cuts – and I will fight them tooth and nail.”

ANDY BURNHAM, perhaps hoping to land blows on his opposite number in the same way as Ed Balls has done recently. On Twitter today, Burnham said:

“After Gove comes Lansley. HSJ says his plan 2 hand NHS budget 2 GPs is chaos. This the man, don’t forget, who said no more top-down re-orgs.”

On the public sector pensions question, Burnham suggested that contributions from employees may rise, saying:

“There may be a need to increase employee contributions across the board, payment periods may need to increase and there might have to be a review at the rate at which pensions are paid out – but I will campaign for decent, index linked, final salary schemes to remain in the public sector.”

DIANE ABBOTT was perhaps the most strident in her response on public sector pensions today. Abbott said:

“As leader of the Labour Party, I would stick by our promise to provide sustainable public sector pensions. In fact, I would reconsider the cuts altogether. Instead I would look at increasing tax for high earners as a way of evening out the playing field.”