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When Europe was casting around for someone to become its first president it was David Miliband who said the successful candidate should be someone "who stops the traffic in the street".

Mr Miliband appears to be someone who does just that.

As a interview with Look East comes to an end, a car driver screeches to a halt, the driver wrenches down his window and holding up his mobile yells: " 'ere David can I have your photo?".

Mr Miliband duly obliges and as other cars start to queue, the former Foreign Secretary engages the driver in conversation.

He discovers the driver's an estate agent, which prompts from Mr Miliband the comment: "Estate agents are more popular than politicians these days."

When he made his "stopping the traffic" comment, David Miliband was referring to his mentor Tony Blair who was being widely tipped as the first president of Europe.

At the same time Mr Miliband was being touted for the post of European Foreign Minister. He ruled himself out of that job saying he wanted to instead devote his energies to the Labour Party.

So here he is, in Corby, on the latest leg of his leadership campaign tour.

For an hour inside a traditional working men's club he tells supporters that Labour needs to accept that it lost the last election badly and it needs to build a new relationship with the public.

"I think Labour lost badly because too many people on moderately low incomes thought that we were no longer on their side," he says afterwards.

"People also thought that we didn't have a clear enough plan for the future.

"We've got a big hill to climb, we've got to become an alternative government again, we need to build ourselves as a party that's in touch with people around the country again, including in seats, like here in Corby, where we lost a fantastic MP."

But how does someone who was so associated with the last administration - which did lose so badly - set himself up as a future leader?

"It's important to show people we have the capacity to learn. I believe I've got the ability to get the party to unite and become a real movement for change in people's lives.

"I think we should be proud of the things that went well like the minimum wage and the health service but we should also be more humble about the things that went wrong, like the 10p tax rate," referring to the fiasco over the decision by Gordon Brown when Chancellor to abolish the 10p rate of tax.

"I think people want a party that stands up for middle and low income Britain, they want a party that stands up for the creation of wealth as well as fair redistribution, they also want a party that listens."

One thing that hasn't yet changed is the way Labour stage manages these events.

Mr Milband was dropped off by Special Branch a short distance from the hall so that he could be filmed walking along the street.

Outside the hall a group of photogenic politics students just happened to be hanging around and Mr Miliband chatted casually while the cameras rolled.

He was not addressing a public meeting but a carefully screened group of people. Most of them were Labour Party members from the surrounding area but there were also a few photgenic school childen in the room.

The press were allowed to stay for Mr Miliband's opening remarks but were then made to leave during the questions.

The one thing Labour hadn't planned was the estate agent screeching to a halt for his picture. And that probably said more about the appeal of David Miliband than anything else that happened during his short visit to Corby.

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