Even though Jeremy Corbyn has the Big Mo in this Labour leadership campaign, it is fair to say that Yvette Cooper has had a pretty good few weeks too. The Shadow Home Secretary managed to produce all her passion for her speech today in which she finally rounded on Corbyn, as well as rightly attacking the idea that only those at the hard ends of the political spectrum are the ones with principles. This evening she has bagged the endorsement of the Guardian.
Andy Burnham, meanwhile, has not been enjoying the campaign since his bungled handling of the welfare bill. It was striking this afternoon to hear callers on his World at One interview asking him why he wasn’t producing a credible alternative to ‘Tory-lite’, when for years he had been pitching himself as the left-wing candidate in this contest. Corbyn’s rise has left Burnham looking bewildered. Today he also said he didn’t think it was right to attack Corbyn, arguing that ‘the attacks we’ve seen on Jeremy I think misread the mood of the party because what people are saying is they’re crying out for something different, they are fed up with the way politics has been, particularly the way Labour has been conducting politics in recent times’.
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Burnham is right that people are crying out for something different, but what he doesn’t realise, or at least doesn’t want to admit to himself, is that they’re crying out for something different to him and Yvette Cooper.
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