The real Yvette Cooper is standing up

In many ways, Yvette Cooper has a perfect CV for Labour leader: a wealth of experience in government, not factional, respected by colleagues (except those who had a habit of moaning that she was, er, working on her leadership bid when in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet), well-known in the party membership, capable of delivering a jolly good speech that cheers up a grumpy conference and capable of using her long experience to trip up Theresa May when the Home Secretary is trying to get up to some funny business in the Commons.

But the leadership candidate’s covering letter for her CV is a bit less exciting, because no-one really knows what she stands for. It’s something even her closest friends and supporters admit: you know that Liz Kendall is standing as the Blairite candidate, even if she’s not a fan of these labels, and you know that Andy Burnham is standing as a reinvented man of the left, even though he describes himself as ‘mainstream Labour’.