DAVID MILIBAND warned that a “crackers”

health shake-up would be the next big blow to strike the region – as he denied his campaign to lead Labour was in trouble.

In an interview with The Northern Echo, the long-time favourite launched a fierce attack on plans to axe all primary care trusts, which could cull about 4,000 NHS staff across the region.

Mr Miliband, the South Shields MP, said the proposals were as big a threat as the scrapping of school rebuilding programmes and the demise of regional development agencies.

He warned: “They are honestly crackers. The idea that you run the health service with one guy in Whitehall and 500 GPs around the country – and nothing in-between – is freemarket madness. It will be absolutely disastrous and is a real risk.”

During the interview, the Shadow Foreign Secretary warned the coalition’s cuts threatened a double-dip recession, saying: “The Tories have pulled the rug from under the economy.

Confidence is going through the floor.”

Mr Miliband insisted he was the candidate willing to say the unpopular, adding: “I have had to say some things I believe the party needs to hear, not what it wants to hear.”

And he revealed he had yet to look at Tony Blair’s memoirs. “When I have time on my hands, I shall read them, but I don’t anticipate that in the near future.”

But Mr Miliband was forced to deny he was losing ground badly to his brother, Ed, who has boasted he hopes for a “clean sweep”. He said: “I have always said it was going to be a close race.”

Pointing to a poll suggesting he was more than twice as popular as his brother among Labour voters, with 26 per cent to Ed’s 11 per cent, Mr Miliband said: “The public, by a very large margin, believe I should win.”

The South Shields MP has based his campaign on four themes; his appeal to the public, his ability to unite the party, his edge in the battle of ideas and his credibility as an alternative prime minister.

He also fiercely rejected Tory taunts that he was attacking the Government’s cuts, despite Labour itself fighting the General Election on a platform of huge spending reductions.

Insisting the impact on the region would have been very different if Labour had won, he said: “We set out how we would protect Building Schools for the Future and there was a very clear case for Wynyard Hospital.”