From the beginning of her campaign to be deputy leader, Harriet Harman has not been shy in articulating that the party needs a woman in the role. As one of two female candidates, Harman has even commissioned polling which shows ‘that I am the most appealing candidate across all voters. I think people are looking at a team of Gordon and me and they get it. It’s as simple as that. It could be described as Gordon’s Radio 4, and I’m Radio 2.’

Expanding on this theme, Harman is clear in her determination to keep the concerns that matter to women high on the agenda. She talks with passion about the great strides the government has made on childcare and domestic violence, both policy areas she has worked hard on since becoming an MP. Does she think though that she is too narrowly focusing her campaign on ‘women’s issues’? ‘I think it’s important that this campaign should not be an all-male campaign. Now, imagine if you have all the hustings and it’s all men, you have all the television debates and it’s all men. What would that say about Labour’s commitment to women in this country?’

However, it is not only the Labour party’s image that concerns Harman, but also the Tories, and their current repositioning. ‘David Cameron is making a cynical pitch for women’s votes, and in particular he’s talking about the family. We’ve done a lot to help families, things the Tories oppose, like child tax credits, maternity pay leave and nurseries, and I think I am best placed to see off that challenge.’

When asked what she offers as a candidate, bar her appeal to female voters, Harman stresses her commitment to the Labour party through her own campaigning: ‘I haven’t just talked about building up party membership, I’ve actually built it in my constituency. We’ve got about 700 members, which is more than any of the other deputy candidates.’

She also bats away any negative reference to the fact that, unlike the majority of her rivals, she has never held a cabinet post. People are not interested in ‘what position you’ve been given by Tony Blair but what you’ve actually done with it.’ She argues that ‘you can be in cabinet and contribute a huge amount, or you can be a backbencher and contribute a huge amount,’ and even (with a mischievous smile) that ‘you can be in the cabinet and not contribute a huge amount, but I won’t go there.’

Returning to the theme of the Opposition, Harman believes that Labour has to sharpen its attack on the Tories, relishing the opportunity to describe Cameron as an ‘eco-smug’. However, while it’s important to develop a critique of the Tories, the Labour party itself needs to renew and focus on the challenges ahead if it is to win a fourth term. On this, Harman is clear what needs to be done, describing how the party needs a new pledge card which focuses on ‘the things that are really important for the country and the party. I would say public transport, housing, youth services, and the elderly.’

More controversially, she reinstates a pledge she made at Progress conference last year, calling for a greater role for communities in foreign policy-making. Is that not a potentially dangerous – let alone impractical – path to go down? Harman explains: ‘There needs to be a debate about our foreign policy, so I think it should be one of our key pledges, that we are going to do foreign policy differently. It’s not going to be an expert thing done by ambassadors and a group of excellent ministers, it’s going to be that you will have as much discussion about foreign policy as your local school.’

If she is wading through unchartered waters on foreign policy, then she is back to familiar territory on the need for the government to do more for inner-city constituencies like her own, where she has seen first hand the growth of gangs and street violence. ‘The problem has changed in that they’re getting involved in gangs from a younger age,’ she says, ‘so whereas in the past it might have been fighting with fists, it’s now knives and guns.’ This means more must be done, including better youth services; ‘there needs to be good things for young people to be doing’ as well as ‘more intelligence-led policing’.

Finally, she reiterates that this agenda is Labour’s, not the Tories’, and that she is the only candidate who can respond to the electorates’ demands for a new politics. She tells a story of an MP who told her, ‘I was thinking, whom do I want in the last week of the local elections walking up the high street, and I want you and Gordon.’ Harman is hoping the rest of the Labour party wants her doing that too.