Ed Balls has hit out at the "soap opera" surrounding fellow Labour leadership contenders David and Ed Miliband, as the contest is increasingly framed as a battle between new and old Labour.
Writing on the Labour List website today, the shadow education secretary said: "The now daily episodes of the Miliband soap opera suit those who want to keep this a two-horse race, but do not do justice to the issues at stake in this election”.
"Getting lost in debates about new and old Labour may generate lots of headlines, but will get us nowhere with the public.
"We need to show why our ideas will help meet the challenges of the next decade rather than the last one, and will help us win back the voters we lost.”
Setting out a plan to invest £6bn in 100,000 new affordable homes, Balls said Labour needed to challenge the "savage, unnecessary and deeply destructive" public spending plans of the coalition.
"For every pound spent on house building an estimated £1.40 in gross output is generated across the economy," he said.
"Every two homes built create an estimated three full time jobs plus up to four times that number in the supply chain."
Balls will be joined by his wife and shadow work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper, shadow housing minister John Healey and Labour London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone at an event in London this afternoon to announce the plan.
His proposals come as the Policy Exchange think-tank published a report also calling for an extra 100,000 social homes to be built each year.
The report recommends that housing developers be able to offer cash incentives to residents in order to secure support for new construction projects.
It argues that decisions on new housing should be taken away from council planners and placed in the hands of residents, preventing a minority from blocking projects that are supported by the majority.
The author of the report Alex Morton said: "It should be up to local people how much development is allowed near them, through ballots of those affected by proposed developments.
"The cash incentives will be bigger in areas where housing is more expensive, meaning it is likely that more homes will be built in areas like London and the South East."
But Balls' attempts to wrest the spotlight away from the Miliband brothers may be in vein, as senior Labour figures begin to pick sides.
Writing in the Times today, Lord Mandelson warned that Ed Miliband was making a mistake by appearing to want to undo the New Labour project.
"I think that if he or anyone else wants to create a pre-New Labour future for the party then he and the rest of them will quickly find that that is an electoral cul-de-sac," the former business secretary said.
"David has not said that. Ed, I think, sometimes allows his rhetoric to run away from him and to allow the impression to be created that, rather than pivoting forwards from now, he wants to pivot back to some pre-New Labour stage."
The younger Miliband hit back by saying: "Peter's always entitled to his point of view and he has been a great servant of our party in the past, but I think actually now Labour needs to move on.”
And David Miliband appeared less that keen on the former business secretary's endorsement of his campaign.
“Party members, including me, are sick and tired of the old battles of the past being rerun," he said in a statement.
Fellow leadership contender Andy Burnham said it was "sad" that senior Labour figures were making the contest a fight between new and old Labour.
"It is time to free Labour from the grip of the warring elites trying to control our party," he said.
While Diane Abbot said: "Lord Mandelson needs to understand that his era is over. Nothing could be more damaging to David Miliband than the impression that Lord Mandelson, Alistair Campbell and the old crew are behind him pulling the strings."
Lord Mandelson's intervention comes ahead of a BBC 2 interview with former prime minister Tony Blair due to be broadcast tomorrow night in which it is speculated he will endorse David Miliband.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd
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