Breakfast in Doncaster

7 May: Polling Day

 

• Ed Miliband expects to reach Number 10.

 

• He is given elaborate instructions on how to avoid the local livestock that might make him look less than prime ministerial.

 

• The new leader will need more reliable, up to date, polling.

 

 

IT IS THE MOST middle-class object. Ever. Don’t take my word for it. In a vast study of British social attitudes conducted by Gordon Brown’s former pollster Deborah Mattinson for her BritainThinks project the cafetiere was the object most people believed typified a middle-class lifestyle. So I betrayed my humble origins by squeezing down on the one resting on the table in Ed Miliband’s conservatory before the coffee was remotely ready to pour in my desperate desire to get a caffeine fix.

The Labour leader and his wife Justine had voted early – though not often, as the traditional motto of the voter-riggers goes – in his Doncaster North constituency and they had invited the press pack that had pursued them for the past six weeks in for breakfast. Joining them was the gang with which we had become familiar – the affable communications chief Bob Roberts, broadcasting guru Matthew Laza, ‘second brain’ Stewart Wood, and the cool and competent chargé d’affaires Rachel Kinnock.

The house, Justine admitted, wasn’t regularly used as the kids were at school in London but wouldn’t have been a bad place to let them run free with a generous garden backing on to open countryside at the edge of the constituency.

Earlier in the morning, though, the proximity of a rural hinterland very nearly posed a problem. Ed Miliband shared with us the map which Bob Roberts had drawn for him, demonstrating the best route to the local polling station. Surely he wasn’t so unfamiliar with his own constituency that he required a map to cast his vote? No, not at all. The Labour leader then pointed out to general amusement a stick-like object scrawled on the piece of paper and took guesses as to what beast it purported to represent. It was in fact, a horse. Bob Roberts said:

Yes I know my lack of artistic skill became the butt of jokes but we had constructed a route to the polling station up a country road – we knew the cameras would be interested. So the image was sunlit uplands. But when it was recced, we found out we had a problem with an aggressive dog and a horse kept sticking its head over a wall.

The last thing we wanted was the pictures of a possible prime minister being bitten by a hound or looking as though he was having a conversation over a fence with a rather sleepy-looking nag.

So an approved route was chosen to minimise risk, though it hadn’t become entirely possible to avoid a ‘vote UKIP’ poster. Someone wondered aloud whether the now prime ministerial security detail surrounding Miliband wouldn’t just take the unfortunately curious equine out. Ed Miliband had his own tale to tell about security. He had left the previous night’s rally in Leeds in an armoured vehicle but had intended to join up with his loyal band of campaigners aboard their ‘battle bus’. The burly security men had driven them to the rendezvous point, an almost deserted car park near Leeds United’s Elland Road ground. The only sign of life was a courting couple in another vehicle who got spooked at the sight of Ed Miliband’s chisel-jawed minders. The Milibands patiently waited for the bus for nearly half an hour then gave up. One of those aboard the bus later told me ‘we detoured to get a few beers in’.

I joked that sitting in the deserted car park must have been like a scene from A Very British Coup – the thriller by the former Labour MP Chris Mullin in which a left-wing leader is ousted from office subtly but effectively. Miliband said, ‘Yes, I was worried they were about to open their “in the event of a Labour government” envelopes’.

The mood that morning was relatively upbeat. Ed Miliband wore casual clothes and said there was no point worrying about the result as little could be done to change it. He certainly believed he could be prime minister at that stage. He was under orders to do some canvassing then rest for the long night ahead. The published polls were still suggesting it was too close to call and one insider said: ‘Look, one things for sure. Cameron is just not going to get an overall majority.’