Over at Left Foot Forward they have an interview with Labour leadership contender Ed Balls where he has a not-to-subtle dig at the Brothers Mili-E/D.
1] He tells them to stop trying to split the British public into pointless demographic segments. 2] He suggests that he was battling Tory cuts while they were wandering around harvesting CLP backing.
Here’s the extract.
The idea that we should either only focus on unskilled working people on the one hand or only focus on middle England on the other, I think both those things are pretty out of date. I worry that they’re rerunning the debates of the past.”
In an apparent side-swipe to his leadership challengers, he said he was “willing to make a Labour case and not to bow, and pander, bite my lip, and fudge my message.”
But Mr Balls conceded that: “I never had the early organisation to compete with David or Ed on CLP selections. To be honest our energy in June and July went far more into the campaigning work we were doing in Parliament rather than the big effort on ringing around CLPs and maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have spent less time focused on Michael Gove and more time ringing up officers and CLPs around the country because I do know that it does make a difference.”
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey