Ed Miliband: My secret weapon
By Ian Dunt
Ed Miliband has insisted he has the momentum to win the leadership contest, and praised the ‘secret weapon’ of his campaign.
Talking to politics.co.uk, the Labour leadership candidate insisted he was running “the largest field operation that any political campaign has had in a leadership election in the history of British politics”.
He revealed that the leadership bid had employed a campaigning system modelled on that employed by the Labour party, but given more freedom to its activists.
“Basically I think we’ve had a secret weapon in this campaign, which is the army of volunteers have had up and down the country,” he told politics.co.uk.
“We’ve had four or five thousand people making phone calls on my behalf. We’ve had phone banks in over 20 cities most evenings and we’ve had a system where for the last three months anyone can make a phone call on my behalf just from their home, using an online database system.”
He added: “With those 4,000 volunteers, we think most of them were not a member of the Labour party before. They’re mainly young people. I think it’s about the message of change in my campaign. I feel I’ve got the momentum in this campaign. I feel like, particularly in the last few weeks, I have an increasing sense of things moving in our direction.
“I believe I’m the candidate who’s best understood the scale of change we need as a political party. You know, the fact that New Labour was right for its time but we need to move on from New Labour, and all the attacks on me from the New Labour establishment have helped crystallise that message.”
The comments follow news from the Ed Miliband camp that their candidate has overspent his brother David for the first time in the campaign.
Of the £328,000 that has been raised in total during Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign, £195,000 has come from private donations and £133,000 has been received from trade unions.
