Year 5 student asks Tristram Hunt whether Ed Miliband is the best person to be Labour leader

Video: The shadow education secretary expertly dealt with a tricky question

(Josh Longmore)

Election campaigning is full of surprises and the media feeds off them, anticipating a momentary slip or awaiting an unexpected question to rattle the calmest of politicians and send their minions into a spin.

For Tristram Hunt, he had to deal with the awkward situation recently of a young student declaring his support for Ukip because the party would "get all the foreigners out". He's not been alone in having tricky interactions with school kids: David Cameron has dealt with both "the hardest question" of the campaign and a child who preferred to bury their face in their textbook than talk to the Prime Minister.

Thus, it was brave of Mr Hunt to enter Crampton Primary School a few days later and sit down with a group of politically well-informed nine and ten year olds; members of one of the Burnet News Clubs, after-school groups run by The Economist Foundation. Thankfully, this time there were insightful conversations about the inequality gap and the future of SATs.

One student however felt the need to bring up the Labour party leader, even at a time when his polling numbers are on the up. Mr Hunt was asked, “If you were to choose another leader apart from Ed Miliband, who would you choose?”

The young schoolgirl responded to Mr Hunt's reply by suggesting that David Miliband had some good policy ideas.

A quick-thinking and witty Mr Hunt responded, "We like all the Milibands in the Labour party. We're very pro-Milibands."

When asked about the difficulty of doing school room visits, Mr Hunt said, “I love it, it’s really exciting. You don’t know what’s going to happen and their brains work in completely different ways.

"Given that the rest of the day you're going to spend your time with politicians and journalists who are artfully constructing non-questions and non-answers in a circular Dante inferno misery - to be with these unencumbered minds is rather wonderful."