Miliband Employs Firm For Leadership Advice

Ed Miliband has employed the services of a consultancy which aims to improve leadership skills, Sky News has learned.

Enlightened Mind specialises in business psychology and neuroscience "in order to build leadership skills that deliver lasting organisational change".

According to its website, the company works to help body language and breathing, and to tackle "the anxiety we all feel to different degrees when communicating an important message to others".

A Labour spokesman said: "We never comment on anybody we may or may not have employed."

It comes as Mr Miliband today prepares to give a major speech on foreign policy.

The Labour leader is expected to warn the UK is losing its world standing thanks to inward-looking Conservative policy, saying: "David Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation.

"And that has happened because the Government he led has stepped away from the world, rather than confidently towards it, side-lined in crucial international events time after time under this Government - just at the moment when we needed to engage."

In a speech at Chatham House, he is expected to say the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean is partly due to foreign policy failings in Libya.

He will say: "The tragedy is that this could have been anticipated. It should have been avoided.

"And Britain could have played its part in ensuring the international community stood by the people of Libya in practice, rather than standing behind the unfounded hopes of potential progress only in principle."

Mr Miliband is also expected to address the threats faced by the UK, including from terror group Islamic State, saying he supports the UK's part in air strikes but that "the lessons of previous interventions" must be learned.

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His speech comes as one of three new opinion polls puts Labour below 30% for the first time since campaigning began.

The latest Survation/Daily Mirror poll has the party down four points from 17 April on 29%, with the Tories four ahead on 33% - despite dropping a point themselves.

However, the latest YouGov/Sun poll makes better reading for Labour, putting them on 35% to the Tories' 33%.

The Sky News poll of polls has Conservatives on 34%, Labour one point behind on 33%, UKIP on 13% and the Lib Dems on 8%.