Yvette Cooper is attempting to put as much distance as possible between her and the anonymous ‘Taliban New Labour’ comments. In an article for the Huffington Post, Cooper’s campaign chair Shabana Mahmood says there is no place for negative briefing in the Labour leadership contest. Mahmood sets out two promises from the Cooper campaign:
‘If anyone is speaking on behalf of the campaign, they will do so explicitly on the record. There will be no unattributed negative briefings about other candidates because that’s not the kind of politics Yvette has ever wanted to champion
‘If anyone else is speaking to you and claiming to do so on Yvette’s behalf and wants to criticise opponents – you can take it from me that they do not speak for the campaign or Yvette – and if she or I get to hear about it they will have lost our trust and our respect. I hope that all of the candidates will join me in making that pledge.’
She is not the only Labour figure to lambast the anonymous briefing. After her speech this afternoon, interim leader Harriet Harman said the remarks were ‘absolutely out of order and I hope we will see no more of that.’ But it’s Cooper who seems most concerned. Last night, her campaign also tweeted out that the comments were playing into the Tories’ hands:
‘These are phrases our campaign has already made clear did not come from us. The Tories want nothing more than for this L’ship campaign to descend into stories about in-fighting & rows. Let’s not give them that gift.’
One of the reasons Cooper is going to a lot of effort to distance herself from the comments is that she is the most vulnerable to accusations of playing hardball politics. Cooper is the longest serving MP of all the leadership candidates, having been an MP since 1997 and a minister since 2005. She has to be careful not to be seen as a throwback to the briefing wars of the past. past; her husband, Ed Balls, was close to Gordon Brown’s spinner Damian McBride back in the day.
Cooper also does not want to be seen as too close to Andy Burnham. Both can be lumped together as less radical reformers than Liz Kendall, but Cooper needs to carve out a distinctive space for herself if she is to pickup the second preferences she’ll need to win. The Telegraph attributed the ‘Taliban New Labour’ remarks to ‘sources close to Mr Burnham and Mrs Cooper’, with no specific details of which side actually said it. With denials from Team Burnham and Team Cooper, Westminster’s hunt for the anonymous briefer goes on.
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