Compiling Vim with local installation of Python instead of system wide version

Compiling Vim with local installation of Python instead of system wide
version

I'm trying to configure and compile Vim 7.4 on a machine that I do not
have root access to. I've installed Python 2.7.5 to my user directory
under ~/.local/python. However, while configuring Vim, it always defaults
to using the system version of Python 2.4 at /usr/bin/python.
Nothing I've tried works, it always defaults to using the system wide
version while configuring. And then while compiling with make.
I've tried using using virtualenv to prevent this issue, but it persists.
The output from the configuration pertaining to Python is below:
checking --enable-pythoninterp argument... yes
checking for python2... /usr/bin/python2
checking Python version... 2.4
checking Python is 2.3 or better... yep
checking Python's install prefix... /usr
checking Python's execution prefix... /usr
checking Python's configuration directory... (cached)
/home/students/cw9833/.local/python/lib/python2.7/config
checking if compile and link flags for Python are sane... no: PYTHON DISABLED
checking --enable-python3interp argument... no
If someone could tell me how to force make and the configuration to use my
local installation of Python that'd be wonderful. Or how to make my local
installation of Python the default for myself, I'd appreciate it heavily.