Labour leadership hopeful Ed Miliband claimed yesterday he had the momentum to win the party’s leadership race after a poll put him ahead of his elder brother David.
The younger Miliband said he was the only candidate who fully understood the “scale of the change” needed in the party but added his brother was a “massive asset” to Labour.
Both brothers took to the airwaves yesterday as the leadership race entered its final stages, with shadow foreign secretary David Miliband claiming he was the contender the Tories feared.
A survey of Labour members and trade unionists by YouGov for the Sunday Times showed bookies’ favourite David Miliband enjoying a narrow lead on first preferences.
But the pollster calculated that once lower-ranking candidates were eliminated and their second choices redistributed, the younger of the two brothers would prevail when the final result is announced on September 25.
Shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband said the party was “making a judgment about the best person to beat David Cameron and I think they are turning to me”.
He told Sky News’ Sunday Live programme: “My sense is that it’s moving towards me in every section of the electoral college, including the Parliamentary Labour Party, and it does depend on people’s second and sometimes third preferences.
“I think fundamentally it’s about my message and about what I’ve been saying in this campaign and about the way we need to understand that New Labour was great for its time and we’ve got to keep some parts of it, about appealing to all sections of the electorate and so on, but we’ve also got to move on, change, admit some of the things we got wrong and understand the lessons of the last general election.”
The shadow energy secretary, who portrayed himself as the “candidate for working people in this country”, insisted there had been “no secret deal” with the trade unions for their support.
The younger Miliband is seen as being to the left of his Blairite brother, but he said there were no difficulties between the pair and they had a “very nice chat” after a recent hustings in Bristol.
Ed Miliband said: “I’m hoping very much that he will serve as a member of my team if I win this election. He has said publicly that he would serve and I think he’s a massive asset to the Labour Party and a massive asset to British politics, and I would want him very much to be part of my team and I hope very much that will be the case if I win.”