Ed Miliband declared that a historic general election victory over the Tories was within Labour’s reach if everyone in the party continued to fight “until the final moment and the final hour” of campaigning on Thursday evening.
Before a rally of activists in London, Miliband told the Observer that he expected the result to be determined during the five-day run-in and that success was within the party’s grasp.
Calling the party’s supporters to go the extra mile in what he expected to be the tightest contest in a generation Miliband said: “I think it is there to be won if we keep going and if we show the energy and the hunger to change the country.
“I am incredibly proud of the campaign that Labour party people have run on the ground but I urge them to keep going until the final moment because this election may well be decided in the final hour. I think the country is on the brink of change and on the brink of change for working people. If we keep going right to the end, right to Thursday at 10pm, then that change is possible but only if we keep doing that.”
With the polls, including an Opinium survey for the Observer, showing Labour and the Tories neck and neck, both Miliband and Cameron will be trying to shift undecided voters into their camps in the final days.
Miliband added: “I urge Labour people to keep going right until the final minute of the final hour at 10pm on Thursday night because this is going to be an incredibly close election.
“I have every possible faith. There is the most unprecedented mobilisation of our people that we have seen at an election in a generation. Labour people going door to door, house to house talking to people about their lives and how we change the country.”
Meanwhile David Cameron sought to personalise the campaign around his own leadership, suggesting voters think carefully about who they wanted to be running the country after Thursday.
“If you want your preferred prime minster, vote for your preferred prime minister. Don’t take a risk thinking ‘I’ll vote Liberal Democrat and hope I get the prime minister I want’ or vote Ukip and hope somehow it emerges. If you want me to carry on leading the country, making sure we have that stability and security in our economy, vote accordingly because we are only 23 seats short from that overall majority.”
As all the party leaders used the bank holiday weekend to make rallying calls, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, at an event in his Sheffield Hallam constituency, said neither of the two main parties would win a majority, so the key question for voters was how to contain the excesses of the left and right.
“The question is not is it Ed Miliband or David Cameron going to walk into No 10 – one of them will – it’s who is going to be there alongside,” he said.
Clegg will announce a final “red line” that the Lib Dems would demand in any coalition negotiations. He will say that after five years of pay restraint, teachers, nurses, police officers and that all those who work in the public sector should no longer face pay cuts.
Attempting to court millions of public sector workers, many of whom have deserted his party since it joined the coalition, he will say the work they do is the cornerstone of a “fair and decent” society, and that government has a “moral obligation” to support them and protect the services they provide.
The Lib Dem proposals would introduce a minimum pay increase in line with inflation for the next two years, and guarantee real term increases in pay once the books have been balanced.
This means a nurse on £25,000 would receive a minimum pay increase of £350, a police officer on £30,000 would receive £490 and a teacher on £35,000 would get at least £490 over the first two years.
Labour on Sunday unveiled a batch of celebrities who have come out in support of the party, including the Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs and the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan.
In attempt to court the student vote, and to embarrass the coalition over its record on university tuition fees, Labour said that if the Tories were returned alone or with Clegg’s party students would be facing a further £2,500 a year rise.
New analysis of spending projections, it said, showed that the scale of planned cuts by the government would leave a £1.5bn shortfall in the higher education budget by 2018-19.
Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said: “Having trebled fees to £9,000, saddling a generation with soaring debt, now the Tories and Lib Dems are preparing to hike fees and hit students once again.
“It is clear that students are set to pay the price for the Tories’ extreme cuts to the higher education budget.
“Both the Tories and Lib Dems – who broke their promise to scrap fees – have refused time and time again to rule out a further rise in tuition fees in the next parliament.
“In contrast to the Tories’ secret plans to hike student fees again, Labour will cut fees by a third to £6,000 and boost grants for students from lower-income backgrounds to ensure that no one is held back from achieving their aspirations.”
Miliband added that the last few days of the campaign would be ones in which voters had to decide between two different visions for the country: “David Cameron wants to say this election is a fight between two nations – a fight between England and Scotland. I believe it is a fight between two ideas about how the country can work and succeed.”
