What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Ed Miliband is the first to admit he isn’t everyone’s idea of a sex symbol.

But on a cold grey day in Wolverhampton, women are throwing themselves at the Labour leader.

“You can come back to mine for coffee and dumplings – can I snog you?” asks Wendy Cooper, who has demanded a hug.

“Definitely not, I’ve got a wife,” Mr Miliband protests.

But as he lines up to have his picture taken with the 29-year-old teaching assistant and her younger sister Tracey, she tries to pinch his bum.

“I can’t help it, I’ve been stalking you, watching you on TV,” says Wendy, adding: “He is fit actually.

"He’s got the nice model legs. If he didn’t have a wife you would be taking a photo with my tongue down his throat.”

Tracey, 28, chips in: “If I got him home I don’t know what I’d do.”

From the safety of his waiting car Mr Miliband, 42, asks aides who paid the pair and adds: “There’s no accounting for taste.”

The would-be Prime Minister and dad-of-two is better known as a bit of a geek than as a heart-throb, but the amorous attentions of the Cooper sisters is the latest sign of a new public interest in Labour’s leader.

After a faltering start he has set the political agenda by speaking up for the “squeezed middle”, standing up to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and taking on rip-off firms.

The transformation was completed with a conference speech which saw him steal the inclusive “One Nation” mantle from Tory moderates.

He was mobbed on the red carpet at the Mirror’s Pride of Britain awards – a “fantastic” night out where he shared a table with The Wire star Idris Elba.

And under the gaze of fellow passengers on a train out of London, Mr Miliband isn’t ­grumbling about the new-found attention.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

“Don’t go into politics unless you are interested in people,” he says. “What I think is really interesting is that actually people are incredibly nice to you.”

He even has a positive take on the stories mysteriously appearing recently knocking him and his family, saying: “It’s obvious someone is rattled.”

Out on the campaign trail he is constantly stopped for a chat or a photo as he tries to drum up voter interest in ­Thursday’s police commissioner elections.

Like Tony Blair, he wants to steal a march on crime and thinks the Coalition have gifted him an opportunity.

He has set out tough new plans to ensure crime doesn’t pay and to force yobs to make amends, in the run-up to the first polls for US-style commissioners.

Mr Miliband compares that with David Cameron’s out-of-touch record of taking thousands of police off the streets, ­scrapping ASBOs and axing CCTV.

He says he understands why crime matters so much from his constituents in Doncaster. “I’ve had too many people in my surgeries in tears after being victims of anti-social behaviour.”

Later, he tells residents and businesspeople at the All Saints community centre that crime demonstrates the need for his “One Nation” approach because even the rich can’t insulate themselves from it.

The Labour leader believes that Cameron’s stance on the living wage also shows that he is out of touch.

Downing Street claimed his proposal to bar firms who don’t pay it from winning Government contracts broke EU law.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

That was “very instructive... fancy this Government trying to hide behind the skirts of Europe to hide their failure”, he scoffs.

A fan of US politics, he insists Obama’s victory is good news for him and bad for the Government.

Defeated Republican Mitt Romney was, he says, peddling the same “old answers” as the Tories – slashing tax for the rich and slashing protection for workers.

Mr Miliband adds: “Barack Obama won because he was for the many not the few.”

One opponent he does have time for is Nadine Dorries, suspended by the Tories after abandoning her constituents for I’m A Celebrity...

He says it is double ­standards from a PM who let pleb row minister Andrew Mitchell cling on for weeks.

Not that any Labour MPs should be contemplating a month in the Australian jungle.

“People want to know you are serving your constituents, not off eating rats’ brains.”

And while most leaders grow into the job, Mr Miliband reveals that he has shrunk – after hiring a personal trainer.

The gruelling leadership battle against his brother David gave him an expanding waistline but that doesn’t stop him digging in to a bag of fresh samosas, handed to him by well-wishers.

“I was – when I got the job – I was, um, slightly overweight,” he says ruefully, tucking into a second.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

As well as shifting a few pounds, Mr Miliband has made a point of spending more time with wife Justine and their sons Daniel, three, and Samuel, just two.

Samuel has started trying to push his older brother around.

Some might say that sounds familiar, but he insists: “I was a very good younger brother.”

Relations between the adult ­Miliband siblings are still strained and, asked if David might return, he says “not for now”.

He backs his brother’s decision to make his “contribution” away from the front bench.

Mr Miliband changed party rules to pick his own team and says the Shadow Cabinet has started to set out its stall, as well as being “a good and effective Opposition”.

“We have already laid out a sense of what Labour has learned on issues like immigration, Iraq, bank regulation.”

His approach wins another admirer at F Ward butcher’s shop on Dudley Road.

Norma Levett, 76, who is helping her son out behind the counter, says: “Towards the end of the last Labour government they forgot the working man.

"He is ­beginning to be more endearing to us.”

If the reaction in Wolverhampton is anything to go by, it seems she’s right.

* A political giant reborn: David Miliband back on the campaign trail