Yvette Cooper: What you need to know about the potential future home secretary

Published

4 months ago

June 4, 2024

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After rising to Labour stardom under New Labour, Yvette Cooper was sidelined under Jeremy Corbyn. But she’s now seen a rapid return to the frontbenches.

Yvette Cooper was first elected in the 1997 Labour landslide; the previous incumbent was prised from a safe seat to afford her easy entry to the Commons.

Since then, she has been the first female chief secretary to the Treasury, where she was an advocate for a “feminist approach to economics”.

But she has also faced a turbulent time in opposition – after being relegated to the backbenches under Jeremy Corbyn; perhaps as a consequence of her public criticisms of him.

Most recently, in her role as shadow home secretary under Sir Keir Starmer, she has promised to run a “hands-on Home Office” with a focus on cutting crime rates.

Election latest: Farage’s Tory rival ‘sorry to hear’ about milkshake attack

Many people may also know her from her marriage to Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s former top adviser and confidante. Ms Cooper and Mr Balls married in 1998, and soon became the ultimate power couple. Their marriage made them the first couple to sit in the government cabinet together. They have three children.

A family with an impeccable Labour pedigree

Ms Cooper was born in Inverness in Scotland in 1969 but raised in the South East of England in leafy Hampshire.

She was born into a Labour family – her father was a union leader, and her mother was a maths teacher who initially came from a mining community.

Ms Cooper has previously spoken of how her father’s unionist values – whom she joined on marches in the early 1980s – have stayed with her throughout her political career.

First taste of politics… ‘I organised a prefect’s strike’

Ms Cooper attended state comprehensive schools as a child, but has admitted she got the political bug while there – over the issue of “white socks”.

She recalls feeling a sense of burning “injustice” when one of the male prefects came to school wearing white socks.

She made the decision to take away his prefect badge and send him “to the headmaster with our demands”.

The perfect career politician’s CV

Ms Cooper later attended Oxford University and read PPE – coming away with a first-class degree.

She was then awarded a Kennedy Scholarship in 1991 to study at Harvard University.

She finished her studies with a MSc in economics at the London School of Economics.

A varied early career

Ms Cooper’s first job was on a farm picking strawberries and driving a tractor.

She later embarked on a journalism career as lead writer of an economic column for The Independent.

‘I did not think I would end up as an MP’

It was 1992 in Arkansas where Ms Cooper made her first impact on the political scene, working on Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign.

At the same time, she was also working in the office of the then Labour leader John Smith, as an economic researcher.

Ms Cooper was then chosen for the seat of Pontefract and Castleford in 1997 which she won with a majority of 25,725 votes, aged 28.

It’s remained a safe Yorkshire seat – although it was renamed Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in 2010. In the 2019 general election, her majority was reduced to just 1,276 votes.

Time in the House of Commons

Ms Cooper quickly found herself working her way up the ranks in the Labour Party and was allocated her first position as parliamentary under-secretary in the Department for Health in 1999.

Ms Cooper then held multiple junior government roles under Tony Blair.

In 2001, she became the first minister to have a period of maternity leave – though some criticism was levelled at her for this, including being called “the Minister for Maternity Leave”.

In 2008, she was the first woman to be appointed as chief secretary to the Treasury, where she spent time highlighting the impact of the recession on women.

After the 2010 election defeat, she got the most votes of any Labour MP in the elected shadow cabinet and took on the role of shadow home secretary.

A tumultuous time in opposition

Ms Cooper faced a tumultuous time in opposition after she was relegated to the backbenches under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

In 2015, she ran against Mr Corbyn in the campaign for the Labour leadership, sparked by the resignation of Ed Miliband.

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She accused Mr Corbyn, the only leftwinger on the ballot, of “bad economics” and policies which “[weren’t] credible”.

She came third with 17% of the vote.

Sir Keir Starmer makes her a frontline star again

After Sir Keir was elected leader of the Labour Party, Ms Cooper soon saw the dynamic change within the party and was brought back to the frontbenches.

Ms Cooper was tasked with the role of shadow secretary of state for the Home Department – a position she has held since 2021.

In this role, she has set out a “five-point plan” for her department:

Crackdown on criminal smuggler gangs, through new cross-border police unit
Clear the backlog and end hotel use
Reform legal routes for refugees to stop people being exploited by gangs
New agreement with France and other countries on returns and family reunion
Tackle humanitarian crises at source helping refugees in their region

Ms Cooper has also claimed she would run a “hands-on Home Office” if she takes the reins after the election and would focus on cutting crime.

Politics

Bank of Canada just says no to retail CBDC in reshuffling of priorities

Published

5 hours ago

September 20, 2024

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Bank of Canada just says no to retail CBDC in reshuffling of priorities

Regulating and speeding up payments without a CBDC are more important to the Canadian central bank.

Politics

SEC approves options for BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF

Published

5 hours ago

September 20, 2024

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<div>SEC approves options for BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF</div>

The SEC notice seemed to be an industry first after the commission approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds on US exchanges in January.

Politics

Farage: It’s possible I could become PM

Published

6 hours ago

September 20, 2024

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Nigel Farage has spoken about his aspirations as Reform UK party leader and insists he could become prime minister.

He told Sky’s political correspondent Darren McCaffrey the prospect of taking over at Number 10 at some point “may not be probable, but it’s certainly possible”.

In an interview on the sidelines of the Reform UK annual conference in Birmingham, he also described his intention to change the party and make it more democratic.

“I don’t want it to be a one man party. Look, this is not a presidential system. If it was, I might think differently about it. But no, it’s not. We have to be far more broadly based,” he said.

He also accepted there were issues with how the party was perceived by some during the general election.

“We had a problem,” he admitted. “Those that wished us harm use the racist word. And we had candidates who genuinely were.”

Earlier the party leader and Clacton MP gave his keynote speech at the conference, explaining how they intend to win even more seats at the next general election.

He also called out the prime minister for accepting free gifts and mocked the candidates in the Tory leadership race.

But he turned to more serious points, too – promising that Reform UK will “be vetting candidates rigorously at all levels” in future.

Addressing crowds in Birmingham, Mr Farage said the party has not got “time” or “room” for “a few extremists to wreck the work of a party that now has 80,000 members”.

Farage says Reform UK needs to ‘grow up’

By Darren McCaffrey, political correspondent in Birmingham

Reform and Nigel Farage can hardly believe their success.

Perhaps unsurprising, given they received over four million votes and now have five MPs.

But today this is a party that claims it has bigger ambitions – that it’s fighting for power.

Having taken millions of votes from the Conservatives, the party thinks it can do so with Labour voters too.

Reform finished second in 98 constituencies, 89 of them are Labour seats.

But it is a big ask, not least of all because it is a party still dominated by its controversial leader and primarily by one majority issue – migration.

Nigel Farage says the party needs to grow up and professionalise if it has a chance of further success.

This is undoubtedly true but if Reform is going to carry on celebrating, they know it also has to broaden its policy appeal beyond the overwhelming concern of its members.

“The infant that Reform UK was has been growing up,” he said in his speech and pointed towards the success of the Liberal Democrats at the general election.

He told delegates his party has to “model ourselves on the Liberal Democrats” which secured 72 seats on a smaller popular vote share than Reform UK.

He said: “The Liberal Democrats put literature and leaflets through doors repeatedly in their target areas, and despite the fact they haven’t got any policies at all. In fact, the whole thing’s really rather vacuous, isn’t it? But they manage with a vote much lower than ours to win 72 seats in parliament.”

Reform won more than four million votes in July, and 14% of the vote share – more than the Lib Dems.