How has Yvette Cooper started as home secretary?

Labour are now making daily pronouncements on the latest policy area where the last government left things in a worse state than it let on. The latest is immigration. Yvette Cooper came to the Commons this afternoon to make a statement on border security. Even though she is now the Home Secretary, she sounded strikingly like she was still in opposition. She was the one responsible for that delay. Anyway, Cooper told the Commons that ‘I have reviewed the policies, programmes and legislation that we have inherited from our predecessors and I have been shocked by what I have found.’ The added: ‘Not only are there already serious problems but on current policies the chaos and costs will likely get worse.’

She repeatedly claimed that criminal gangs had been ‘allowed’ to take hold, and were operating ‘with impunity’. The security and enforcement arrangements are ‘too weak’, and ‘I’m extremely concerned that the high levels of danger that we have inherited are likely to persist through the summer’.