Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)
  • Yvette Cooper
  • SaxonRider
    Full Member

    I know there are folk on here of a Labour persuasion who don’t think she’d make a great leader, but I have to say that, having just read this piece in the Guardian, written by her three years ago, she seriously impresses me with her insight and prescience.

    Such understanding of how another person ticks must certainly bode well for a possible leader!

    the-muffin-man
    Full Member

    Did they pick JC to make Cooper look like a sensible option?

    drlex
    Free Member

    Remember, like the deserving pairing of the odious Gove and Sarah Vine, her husband is Ed “Strictly” Balls.

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    IHN
    Full Member

    Interesting piece. She was bang on in the final paragraph too about how Labour should respond, it’s a shame (and I mean that in the literal sense, the should be ashamed) that they didn’t…

    IHN
    Full Member

    Remember, like the deserving pairing of the odious Gove and Sarah Vine, her husband is Ed “Strictly” Balls.

    What’s your point?

    P-Jay
    Free Member

    She seems a decent candidate for Labour, well educated, but daughter of a Trade Unionist. Well Travelled. 22 years an MP etc.

    The Socialists will HATE her.

    johnx2
    Free Member

    Balls is okay and Cooper is too?

    (A friend (of a friend really) some years ago told me he’d had two cabinet ministers at one of his parties, conjuring images of some kind of high life. Reality was a toddler’s birthday, nursery friends with parents in tow inc E&Y…)

    Just read the piece. Prescient.

    binners
    Full Member

    Through the whole Brexit shambles she has consistently been the most effective voice from the labour benches in doing what the opposition is actually meant to do… hold the government to account

    And someone’s had to do that, since the Labour front bench seems to have forgotten that thats actually their job

    dazh
    Full Member

    After seeing this I though I’d go back and see what she was proposing when she stood for the leadership. It’s all pretty safe, inoffensive, attractive stuff that I doubt any labour candidate or voter wouldn’t be able to sign up to. But that’s the problem. There’s no vision or apparent motivation to actually change what is a broken system. And that’s why she didn’t win.

    I’ve actually got no objection to her as leader, but if it’s ever going to happen she’s going to have to come up with something more inspiring and visionary than she did previously. Being a nice, safe pair of hands is not going to cut it.

    edhornby
    Full Member

    I rate her as much as any of the other options, but question is why she didn’t stand out because she was on the same nomination list as magic granddad when they chose him?

    AlexSimon
    Full Member

    It’s all pretty safe, inoffensive, attractive stuff that I doubt any labour candidate or voter wouldn’t be able to sign up to. But that’s the problem.

    That was the problem with all the other candidates.
    However, I have to say on Brexit, Corbyn has been exactly the same as this which is a crying shame.

    johnx2
    Free Member

    I voted for her. I have no personal problem with unexciting. Politics right now is very exciting, and I’d prefer that it wasn’t.

    (Possibly a bit deraily, I recall a friend at the time of the OP’s article telling me how Corbo made him feel excited and inspired for the first time about politics, which sounds good, but at the time sounded to me a bit like self indulgence. Spmetimes the right thing isn’t always the thing that makes you feel good.)

    P-Jay
    Free Member

    It’s all pretty safe, inoffensive, attractive stuff that I doubt any labour candidate or voter wouldn’t be able to sign up to. But that’s the problem. There’s no vision or apparent motivation to actually change what is a broken system. And that’s why she didn’t win.

    Maybe tastes have changed? Politics is meant to be boring, I have a warm and fuzzy memory of a time, not long ago, when Politics rarely made the front page of the BBC News site. Well unless someone made a particularly cutting remark at PMQ. They made a lot of fuss and noise, but for the most part they didn’t do anything too stupid, the lights stayed on, the bins got collected and we all got on with our lives.

    I’d love to go back to that. I wouldn’t ask much of YC if she got into No10. Invest in the NHS, the Police and Fire Service. Protect our vulnerable, allow the rest of us to get on in life, don’t get into any pointless, violent wars.

    But first, do something very, very unpleasant and disturbing to the bullshit mongers masquerading as ‘the press’. Don’t try to placate them, challenge them every time they lie to us to further their own agenda, force them to print retractions, stop the BBC following their stupid idea of what ‘fair’ is.

    SaxonRider
    Full Member

    Politics is meant to be boring

    I agree. Whereas the American “motto” has always been “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, that of Canada has always been “peace, order, and good government”. Not very exciting, but pretty good for human thriving.

    chewkw
    Free Member

    … she seriously impresses me with her insight and prescience.

    I bet Ed Balls is very impressed with her too.

    tjagain
    Full Member

    Wot Dazh said

    DrJ
    Full Member

    Can’t help thinking that in the event of a GE Yvette Cooper or some similar “sensible-looking” Labour leader would sweep the board, capturing the middle ground so utterly vacated by bojo and the rest of the Tory hedbangers.

    Whether that’s worth it is another matter!

    kcal
    Full Member

    Seems a reasonable person to me.

    Radical policies may be beloved of JC, but he hasn’t been able to carry them forward (whether that’s a problem with the policies, the party MPs or other factors I’m not sure).

    Maybe just replace May with Cooper?

    bigblackshed
    Full Member

    I’d love to go back to that. I wouldn’t ask much of YC if she got into No10. Invest in the NHS, the Police and Fire Service. Protect our vulnerable, allow the rest of us to get on in life, don’t get into any pointless, violent wars.

    This. Very much this.

    P-Jay
    Free Member

    Can’t help thinking that in the event of a GE Yvette Cooper or some similar “sensible-looking” Labour leader would sweep the board, capturing the middle ground so utterly vacated by bojo and the rest of the Tory hedbangers.

    Whether that’s worth it is another matter!

    No doubt, decent Centrists not only win elections, they win big or against the odds.

    Major was so Centric and his back-ground so normal, I can only assume he got lost on the way to Labour HQ and signed up to be a Tory by mistake. He had no business winning the ’92 election really, but he did.

    Tony Blair won 3 on the bounce and managed to raise living standards, reduce poverty, increase public sector spending, reduce the national debt and combined the work Major started, ended ‘The Troubles’ Yes the war was a horrible, terrible mistake, but still. He’s quite mad now of course.

    Some might think that May got a hospital pass, but it was nothing compared to what Brown was handed, but he managed to avoid a certain disaster that wasn’t of his own making, despite what some claim. I heard senior Republicans in the US and the boards of the biggest banks in the world, not exactly big fans of Labour, who couldn’t speak highly enough of him.

    It seems amazing what can be achieved when you don’t have to follow political dogma.

    binners
    Full Member

    Another Labour MP who seems to actually realise the magnitude of what we’re facing and seems keen to actually do something more about it than sit on the fence

    sparkyrhino
    Full Member

    I live in her constituency,yes its a classed as a safe labour seat, but she is well regarded.

    Would welcome the thought of her, becoming Leader of the Party and leading Labour back into focus, and hopefully setting up a well balanced shadow cabinet,of center to hard left mp’s.To capatlise on the blunders and in-fighting of the goverment.

    ps not a JC hater.

    kerley
    Free Member

    It depends what “the question the people are asking” is. And should your policies just be there to appease what the people are asking or should they be based on what you and the party sees as the right things to do.
    There are a lot of people asking a question that Farage seems to be answering….

    ctk
    Free Member

    A female leader of Labour is overdue- but not YC. Watch the leadership hustings she was terrible- not an idea in her head. Also her (publicly) refusing to serve under JC straight after he was elected was petulant, arrogant & irresponsible.

    Corbyn has left the labour party in a better place than when he took over: more members, not in debt, Iraq and financial crisis are in the distant past now plus taking the hit for Brexit! New leader would be good before the next election and left of centre ist please.

    mildred
    Full Member

    She might not be ‘exciting’ but she is one of a few credible politicians left.

    She’s incredibly perceptive and subtle, never overreacting or adopting the current tendency for scandalising everything – there’s a reason she chairs the home affairs select committee & was unopposed at the last election to this role; it’s an utter joy to watch her question colleagues and systematically dismantle any poorly presented argument. It’s like watching a surgeon at work.

    If Labour could just see sense and realise that as any party drifts left or right they begin to alienate the majority then she’d make a very capable and respected PM who I’d vote for in the drop of a hat.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Centrists… Milliband was a centrist, and he simultaneously got accused of being a communist, and also left people having no idea what he believed in. And then after he resigned the Labour party right insisted it was all because he was “too left wing”

    May was portrayed as a centrist even while she lurched to the right and despite her openly racist history as Home Secretary, not just by the right wing press but by the BBC- straight after that mental party conference speech where if you thought you were a citizen of hte world, you were a citizen of nowhere.

    In policy terms Corbyn is wishy-washy slightly left of centre, with a book of aims that’d be instantly recognisable to any pre-Blair Labour leader and yet he’s “hard left”.

    Meanwhile, Cameron and May were notably right wing and the next prime minister is almost certain to be further to the right. And yet they’ll still have people claiming they’ve taken the middle ground. And people are flocking to the Brexit Party.

    Why people still insist the centre is the only place for Labour to go, I have no idea tbh. It’s fantasy politics at this point. The only really energised group in UK politics right now is the hard right.

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)

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