Yvette cooper

There are many reasons why Labour conference felt flat this year, and many of them are out of the party’s control. It cannot help that its MPs and a number of its delegates are tired after an energetic Scottish campaign. It cannot help that the Scottish campaign saw a level of engagement in politics that cannot be replicated, save by another vote with a clear question and clear implications, and that would always have contrasted badly with the Labour conference. It cannot help that the referendum took place just days before the conference began, and that therefore it was impossible to get the same sort of coverage you’d expect in

So all three party leaders agree that it’s worth rushing through emergency surveillance legislation. While David Cameron and Nick Clegg were holding their rare joint press conference, Ed Miliband released a joint letter with Yvette Cooper in which he said ‘we have been guided by our firm conviction that it is essential to maintain the security of our citizens and also ensure people’s privacy is protected’. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both needed to make the case for the emergency legislation today but Nick Clegg also needed to make the case for his support for it, given he had rejected the full Communications Data Bill. He supports the

Theresa May has just given as comprehensive a response as possible to the allegations of child abuse in the Commons. Insisting the government will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the allegations, the Home Secretary told MPs that there will an independent inquiry panel, along the lines of the Hillsborough inquiry, which will examine not just how the Home Office dealt with allegations, but also how the police and prosecutors dealt with information handed to them. As a non-statutory inquiry, it will be able to begin its work sooner and will be at a lower risk of prejudicing criminal investigations because it will begin with a review of documentary

That Ed Miliband is even having to state that he wants to carry on as Labour leader if he loses the general election when his party is ahead in the polls shows what a mess the operation around him is. There are a number of Shadow Cabinet members who seem more interested in what happens after the 2015 election than in their party’s chances in that election. Perhaps this is because they have decided that though their party is ahead now, voters will panic about Miliband as they start to try imagining him as Prime Minister. Better to get your off-the-record briefings in now, and not make too much of

Yvette Cooper has been granted an urgent question on the extremism row at 2.30 today in the Commons, focusing on the conduct of ministers within government. The Shadow Home Secretary is doing her job, making ministers uncomfortable by summoning them to the Commons to answer a question on whether they have broken the ministerial code. But it’s impressive that the row was left to spin out for long enough for Cooper to manage to make an intervention at all. The dispute between Gove and May made Wednesday’s front pages, but it wasn’t until Saturday that Labour decided to launch its two-pronged attack from Cooper and Tristram Hunt. Cooper argued that

My colleague Hugo Rifkind has been bien-pensanting around the issue of racism, to interesting effect. His thesis, in last week’s mag, seems to be that Ukip is a racist party because it says it isn’t a racist party. I suspect Hugo could show you racism in a handful dust. He also refers to the case of Ukip party candidate William Henwood, who according to Hugo ‘declared that Lenny Henry should “emigrate to a black country” and “does not have to live with whites.”‘ On the BBC’s Question Time, meanwhile, Yvette Cooper (14.00) alleged that Henwood had said that Lenny Henry should emigrate to Africa because of the colour of his skin.

Much of the coverage of today’s Immigration Bill has centred around those controversial ‘go home’ vans, now ditched because they only sent one person home. Theresa May told the Commons this afternoon that ‘we won’t be rolling out the vans, they were too much of a blunt instrument’. In response to a question from Keith Vaz, she said: ‘What I said to the right honourable gentleman is I didn’t have a flash of blinding light one day and walk into the Home Office and say, I know, why don’t we do this?’ What I have done is looked at the interim evaluation in relation to the vans. There were some

A good honest debating chamber. That’s how Question Time is billed. In fact it’s an unseemly gold-rush for applause. The panelists are a set of needy egos with semi-fictionalised hairdos. And the audience is composed of wonks and party activists posing as disinterested voters. Last night’s episode was particularly fractious. The crowd was keen to hear about the Daily Mail’s attack on Ralph Miliband ‘as the man who hated Britain.’ But the first question concerned benefit reductions for the under-25s. Quentin Letts, of the Mail, seemed uncharacteristically nervous. He said his ‘prejudice’ would be to target cuts on the young rather than the elderly. He meant ‘preference’. Rather a shaky

This morning, Labour was facing a rather awkward choice on the Same Sex Marriage Bill. This afternoon, the opposition party has turned the situation around so that it appears to be on the front foot. Initially the party needed to decide whether it would back Tim Loughton’s ‘wrecking amendment’ to introduce heterosexual civil partnerships, or whether to take heed of Maria Miller’s pleas and reject it. The first would have demonstrated that Labour does want equality in civil partnerships as well as in marriage. The second would have demonstrated that the party doesn’t want to delay the first gay wedding any longer. But Yvette Cooper announced on the World at

Yesterday Ed Miliband reiterated his party’s existing policies on immigration for voters, today Yvette Cooper went into further detail about how Labour would address the policy area in government. Like Miliband’s PPB, Cooper’s speech speech to IPPR included an acknowledgement that politicians don’t like to talk about immigration, and a mea culpa. She said Labour should have been quicker to bring in the Australian-style points-based system, that the party should have kept transitional controls for Eastern Europe, and that as a government it should have ‘looked more at the impact, and been ready to talk about problems. Cooper was heavy on the policy detail, and some of that detail included

Yvette Cooper was in a stern mood this afternoon when she responded to the Home Secretary’s announcement about plans to opt-out of 130 European law and order measures and then re-adopt those which it fancies. Her main gripe was that she hadn’t been sent Theresa May’s statement about the plans until 45 minutes before it was delivered in the Commons, but she was also peeved about the content. The Shadow Home Secretary argued that ministers ‘haven’t actually told us anything today at all’, arguing that the different limbs of the coalition were doing entirely different things on this matter. While David Cameron had spoken about an opt-out, Nick Clegg had

The Labour party’s love-in with great Tory statesmen continues. Yesterday Miliband went all Disraelian; today Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has raised the spectre of Robert Peel in an attempt to paint modern Tories as out of touch with the police service in the wake of the Andrew Mitchell ‘pleb’ scandal. However, it seems that Yvette has not done her homework. Peel’s view of the average copper was closer to Andrew Mitchell’s alleged words. Writing to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in December 1829, Peel mused on the formation of the police: ‘for subordinate duties connected with the Police, Persons who have not the Rank, Station, and habits of Gentlemen,

The row over G4S’ failure to provide sufficient security cover for the Olympics is starting to feel a little awkward for Labour. This afternoon in the Commons, Yvette Cooper managed to rouse a sardonic chuckle from not just the benches opposite but also the hacks perched in the press gallery when she said that everyone wanted the Olympics to be a success. Why the laughs? Well, the danger for Labour is that in slamming the government’s handling of G4S, the party gets too carried away and appears to be branding the Olympics a shambles too. That would be fine if we had six months before the games, but the opening

Remember when Ed Miliband couldn’t be found anywhere? Now you can barely get away from him. The Labour leader has been conspicuous by his presence over the past week, whether on the airwaves or in graffiti form (see left, a photo taken on London’s South Bank yesterday). And he’s continued that hi-vis trend today, by launching Labour’s local election campaign in Birmingham. Two things stand out from the speech he gave at that event. The first was his heavy emphasis on the pledges he announced last week: capping railway fares, unfreezing the personal allowance for pensioners, etc. As I blogged at the time, it’s doubtful whether these will actually achieve