Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband was in Cambridge today to help campaign ahead of county council elections on May 2.

Around two hundred students and local residents gathered outside Cambridge Guildhall at midday to hear Miliband deliver a speech and answer questions next to Cath Kidson, before a walkabout in Market Square. The event was supposed to take place last Monday, but the decision was made to suspend local election campaigning after the announcement of Baroness Thatcher’s death.

Miliband used his speech to warn that the biggest obstacle facing the Labour party was not competition with the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats, but a sense of fatalism among voters. He insisted that Labour ‘won’t promise things we can’t deliver’. He also confirmed his support for a Cambridge to Oxford rail link, while attacking Michael Gove’s education reforms, whose name drew boos from the audience. 

The Labour leader took questions from the crowd, asking specifically to hear from attendees who were not Labour supporters. Questioned if he could live on £53 a week, in reference to a recent petition calling on work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith to live on this budget following the announcement of the Conservative party’s new welfare reforms, Miliband answered that he could not, ‘because no one can’. Trinity Hall third year Andrea Potts asked for his response to the problem of unpaid interns, to which Miliband's response was that there should be greater regulation to ensure young people are not exploited. 

Miliband enjoyed a jacket potato from the Tramstop van outside Guildhall following his talk, where he revealed that his favourite jacket potato topping is baked beans. Nor was this the day’s only foodie feat, as the owner of a nearby café presented him with a plate of biscuits.   

Cambridge Universities Labour Club, in a statement, said "Ed Miliband's visit today shows that Cambridge is a city Labour is focused on winning both in next month's local elections and in the future. On 2 May students across Cambridge have a choice to make about whether they back the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, two parties which are failing to deliver in government, or whether they elect Labour representatives to work for our city.”

“This was a choice Ed Miliband set out today when he drew students and residents not just from across the city but from all over Cambridgeshire. He was exactly right to say we must reject the idea that there is no choice between politicians; we can elect Labour councillors who will fight for the living wage to be paid to all, campaign for improved transport for Cambridge and do all they can to work against unfair cuts.”

There was positive feedback to Miliband’s visit among students on Twitter: 

Others, however, were less excited by the Labour leader’s visit, in particular Cambridge’s Libertarian Society, which claims to promote individual freedom and liberal thought: