IPSWICH on Monday. Bath on Wednesday. Folkestone on Thursday. London yesterday — at the Eagle pub in Shepherd’s Bush — and Newcastle tomorrow.

The diary of Labour leadership candidate Angela Eagle should cure any cynicism about what MPs get up to when Parliament’s not sitting.

“It’s all a blur,” Eagle tells the Star.

Her busy schedule perhaps reflects the fact that, according to the bookmakers, she has ground to make up on her rivals.

Tom Watson is currently leading the pack, with Stella Creasy, Caroline Flint, Eagle and Ben Bradshaw behind in that order.

But she says: “There’s no point in being too worried about what the other four are doing. You’ve just got to get around and meet as many people as possible and see what happens.”

Her main concern while criss-crossing the country is to “stay away from Jeremy really.”

That desire is not down to political or personal differences. She explains its “because he’s drawing so many people, there’s no point in being in the same place as him.”

Of the three constituencies she visited earlier this week, Ipswich, Bath and Folkestone, all have one thing in common — none are represented by a Labour MP.

The party didn’t even come second in Tory-held Bath and Folkestone, being pushed into second by the Lib Dems and Ukip respectively.

As someone who grew up in the once-safe Tory seat of Crosby, Eagle feels duty-bound to support members in these “neglected constituencies.”

“We’ve now got the MP in Crosby now,” she explains, “but there was a 20,000 Tory majority when I joined at 16 and we were never on anybody’s visiting list. I think we have to revive the party everywhere.”

So presumably she was concerned by Labour adviser Arnie Graf’s assessment of the party as “out of touch” with many communities.

Graf, the brains behind Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 election campaign, worked with Labour to try to overcome Tory spending power between 2011 and 2013.

He criticised the “corporate” style of Labour’s campaign this week, revealing that officials could not find a single minimum-wage worker for one meeting with Ed Miliband.

Eagle, who worked with Graf, said the picture of overstretched local organisers “is very familiar” since Labour came close to bankruptcy in 2007.

As a caveat, she says it can be “harder than you think” to convince a member of the public to face the media.

Asked if she agrees that leaders and officials were “out of touch,” she replies: “I think some of them probably were because you get in a bubble, organising different things. Others weren’t.”

Pitching herself as a “members’ champion,” Eagle promises to redirect resources from central and regional offices to local members.

“I’ve said we should end this command and control structure where members are expected to just door-knock endlessly or be in photo ops.

“I think the excitement and ideas around Jeremy’s campaign are about the party saying we want to talk politics again.

“I’d want to see the party empowered lower down to have its own campaigns.”

That sounds “boring, tedious, organisational stuff,” she admits, before adding in self-defence that Labour would be “more likely to be in touch with what’s going on around the country.”

For her part, Eagle met plenty of working people on the campaign trail.

She was charged with leading a workplace tour to rally members of Labour’s 14 affiliated trade unions to the cause.

Reflecting on that experience, she echoes a widely held view that the unions did a “grand job” during the campaign, and adds that any one of them could have arranged a meeting between Miliband a low-paid worker had they been asked.

And it was unions that last week delivered the biggest boost to Eagle’s campaign.

With builders’ union Ucatt already on board, the addition of rail union TSSA, posties’ union CWU and public-sector union Unison gave much-needed momentum to her campaign.

Eagle says she’s “very proud” to have their support, which she calls a reflection of her “beliefs in the party.”

“I’ve always been a trade unionist, I’ve always defended the link,” she says.

“That doesn’t mean to say it shouldn’t evolve over time. But I think we’d be much poorer, unconnected and unanchored if we didn’t have the link.

“I’ve never thought that trade unions are some sort of ‘mad aunt that needs to be locked in the attic,’ I think the phrase is. I think they make us stronger.

“And I think it’s interesting that most of the unions that are affiliated, if you look, have backed women candidates for the deputy leadership.”

The three unions which recently threw their weight behind Eagle have also backed Jeremy Corbyn’s burgeoning leadership bid.

The shadow leader of House of Commons has been among the few Labour frontbenchers prepared to speak up in defence of Corbyn.

Leadership candidates Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper are among shadow ministers who say they’ll resign if he’s elected.

But Eagle tells the Star she will “work with whoever the party in its wisdom collectively elects,” adding: “If I’m deputy leader, they’ll have to work with me.”

Her message to the party is to keep its eyes fixed on the “real enemy” of the Tories and the “tall order” that is victory in the 2020 general election.

“Let’s not underestimate the challenge — we need to win 94 seats, we need to have a 9 per cent swing,” she says.

“That’s not happened very often in the history of our country, so let’s focus on the real enemy.

“I want to get my shoulder to the wheel and help us get into that place where we can contend and win in 2020.”