Yvette Cooper addressed a lobby lunch today and put on an impressive performance. In contrast to her slightly wooden performance during last night’s debate, Cooper came across as straightforward and articulate — and surprisingly funny. She joked that alongside the ten meetings to sign off the Edstone, there were seven meetings for a ‘fiscally responsible water feature.’ She also told the gathered hacks ‘we want more Haribo!’ in reference to the sweet factory in her constituency.
Unsurprisingly, Cooper spoke confidently on the economy, demonstrating her years of experience on the frontbench. On Greece, she argued that ‘the British government should be using its role within Europe to argue for the Eurozone taking a long-term sensible approach to handling the Greek crisis.’ Cooper also offered some interesting thoughts on where and how Labour failed during the 2015 campaign. In particular, she spoke of the need to ‘reach out’ to areas that have been forgotten about — the areas where Ukip tend to do well:
‘I know we focussed on the Liberal Democrats voters, and in the cities that worked and the Liberal Democrats voters switched to Labour in the towns we did … but there’s a real challenge now for a lot of towns that do feel left behind, coastal towns in particular, small towns across Britain that Labour didn’t win.’
The main criticisms of Cooper’s campaign so far is that she has failed to explain what she stands for and is simply running as a ‘continuity 2010’ candidate. But during the lunch, she did show a genuine passion for feminism and why Labour needs to break ‘that final glass ceiling’:
‘I think that David Cameron has a blind spot on women. He does not quite see it. He does not quite see issues that affect women in different ways. We had all the history about the “Calm down, dear” moment and so on. I don’t think he quite knows how to handle women in parliament as well. So I do think he has an issue. He’s often had a blind spot in terms of doing the cabinet reshuffles in the past, and I think we should be calling him out on it.’
If Cooper was successful in her bid to be Labour leader, her most likely opponent at the 2020 would be Boris Johnson. She was bullish about taking him on:
‘I think we can challenge Boris Johnson on a whole series of things. And do you really want Boris Johnson to be the person answering the phone when Angela Merkel calls and says ‘What are we going to do about Vladimir Putin?’ The challenge to Boris Johnson is about whether or not he can be a serious government minister, never mind anything more serious than that.’
As I wrote earlier about Liz Kendall’s campaign, the real test for Cooper will be the upcoming series of regional hustings whether her genuine personality comes to the fore or whether she simply turns in a series of robotic performances. Her challenge is to convince Kendall supporters within the party that she is the only candidate who can beat Andy Burnham. To do that, she needs to talk up her past experience alongside the ‘big vision’ that she says Labour needs to win in 2020.
However, there is no detail on what this is vision actually is. There were, though, some hints today: Cooper promised to reintroduce the top 50p rate of tax, talked vigorously about staying in the EU and promised to put ‘country before party — although you need a strong party for a strong country’. Although there is still a long way to go in this contest, Cooper would do well to link these themes together to create her vision for Labour.
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