Miliband aide Baldwin says senior Tories threatened BBC during campaign

As the Labour Party begins to pick itself up after an unexpected electoral drubbing last week – and the leadership contest gets underway – one former Miliband aide has written for the Guardian, suggesting that senior Tories threatened the BBC over “what would happen afterwards. In his piece, Tom Baldwin, one of Miliband’s closest advisers, says:

“BBC executives and journalists have told me that there were regular, repeated threats from senior Tories during this election campaign about “what would happen afterwards” if they did not do as they were told and fall into line.”

Baldwin also seems to cast doubt on the suggestion that senior Labour figures believed the Tories were really ahead in the polls:

“Britain was not heading for a minority Labour government but towards a Tory majority and we were all making the same mistake in believing the polls”

Yet like Miliband, Baldwin also seeks to accept responsibility – alongside the rest of the campaign team – for the election result:

“responsibility for our defeat rests with all of us who took decisions in the campaign”

Baldwin is not the first Miliband aide to speak out though, in a series of tweets over the weekend, Simon Fletcher (also formerly a senior Ken Livingstone adviser) had this to say:

We’d be surprised if other members of Team Miliband didn’t also speak out in the coming days…