*Shadow home secretary shows how far party has come since pledges on free movement as she vows to use her experience to make ‘serious’ change*
By Ben Riley Smith, Political Editor and Charles Hymas, Home Affairs Editor
Memories of elections gone by clutter the walls of Yvette Cooper’s parliamentary office.
Above the desk is a fading photograph of Ms Cooper beaming as she steps out of a car, red balloons among the greeting party, during the triumphant 1997 campaign. Another wall has a leaflet bearing the candidate’s name and a Labour rose smudged with inky fingerprints.
Two vast posters date closer to the Labour Party’s creation. One depicts a woman with an infant swaddled in her arms, declaring “mothers vote Labour”. The other shouts: “Men and women workers, your chance at last!”
The images are a reminder both of the Labour Party’s historic feats and more turbulent recent past. Just a single Labour politician born in the last 100 years has won a general election: Tony Blair. It is a head-stretching statistic, one that speaks of how the country fell out of love with Labour – and one that Sir Keir Starmer is determined to defy.
**Party’s rollercoaster ride**
Ms Cooper is all too familiar with her party’s recent rollercoaster ride. “I’ve spent 13 years in government, 13 years in opposition,” says the MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford who first won her seat as the New Labour dawn broke in 1997. “I can tell you which I prefer.”
Labour activists gather in Liverpool tomorrow for the annual party conference filled with a palpable sense that all that could be about to change. With the next general election most likely just a year away, Labour sits 16 percentage points ahead of the Tories in polling averages – a vast lead that would result in a big House of Commons majority if replicated on polling day.
Ms Cooper, as shadow home secretary, would under those circumstances be one of the most senior politicians in the country, the occupier of a great office of state in the first Labour government for more than a decade.
But they are not there yet. And so Ms Cooper, in an exclusive pre-conference interview with The Daily Telegraph, projects the message that Labour is a party which has serious plans for government.
“Having been a cabinet minister, having been a minister in government for many years working on all kinds of different policies, I know what it’s like when people are serious about government, serious about actually delivering things, serious about changing things, when the focus is properly on the country and putting the country first,” says Ms Cooper, who rose to the Cabinet under Gordon Brown.
**Tories putting themselves first**
“What we saw last week [at the Tory conference] was the Conservative Party really putting themselves first and just talking to themselves. Actually for the challenges the country faces, but also the opportunities Britain has, we have to put the country first. It’s what you see in Keir and his determination, his leadership, the changes that he’s made in the party.”
Under a Labour government, Ms Cooper explains to back up her point, police will be told to identify Britain’s 1,000 most dangerous suspected sexual predators and put them under surveillance like terrorists.
All police forces would be told to systematically rank high-risk suspects in their areas, many of whom will not have been convicted, according to the frequency, currency and severity of the allegations of sexual violence against them.
The analysis – similar to that used by forces to track suspected terrorists and organised crime bosses – would result in them being targeted with the “full armoury” of police resources including covert surveillance, most-wanted manhunts, investigations revisiting victims to build cases, electronic tagging and social media monitoring.
The plans are modelled on a pilot launched by Scotland Yard under Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, where 100 of the most dangerous sexual predators in London have been identified.
**Repeated failure to protect women and girls**
For Ms Cooper, the issue is personal. One Labour aide says the repeated failure to better protect women and girls leaves the shadow home secretary more irate than any other issue, likening her determination to drive change in the area to Theresa May’s flagship modern slavery campaign.
Ms Cooper says: “My great-great-grandmother was living in a mining community in Whitehaven. She was attacked by her husband with a poker. It went to court and the court bound him over to keep the peace.
“Actually, that is more protection than lots of domestic abuse victims get today, because their cases don’t even go to court and they don’t even get that action. I mean, that’s 100 years ago. And yet, we’re still going around the same arguments.
“We’ve still not got the changes that we need. I’m sick and tired of women still having to worry about texting a friend once they get home because they don’t feel safe on the streets, about there still being deep failings in the policing and criminal justice system. We have to have much more substantial change.”
Sitting forward in a green fabric armchair in the corner of the office, Ms Cooper, 54, goes on to run through her positions on a host of policy areas contained in her brief.
She speaks with a quiet intensity and specificity. She has spent years thinking about home affairs issues, as chairman of the Commons home affairs committee between 2016 and 2021 – as a moderate she was exiled from the frontbench during the Jeremy Corbyn years – and then in her current role.
In a 26-year parliamentary career there have been many other positions: chief secretary to the Treasury and work and pensions secretary in the final years of New Labour; stints shadowing the Foreign Office and the women and equalities minister under Ed Miliband; and even an attempt at securing the Labour leadership in 2015 before being defeated by Mr Corbyn.
Few others in the shadow cabinet can match Ms Cooper’s governmental experience. So when she outlines a tough stance on the need to control legal migration it is eye-catching.
“Net migration is now at a record high. We expect it to come down, we think it should come down,” Ms Cooper says when asked whether net migration – which in the latest figures was around 600,000 a year – needs to be lower.
Ms Cooper goes on to defend international students coming to the UK, saying they bring “huge investment and benefits” to the country, but notably adopts a much cooler tone when it comes to visas for foreign workers.
**‘Doubling of work visas is a problem’**
“We do think it’s, though, a problem that we’ve had a doubling of the number of work visas in a very short period of time,” Ms Cooper says. “Because that reflects the failure of the Government to properly make sure that there is training in the UK, to properly make sure we’re tackling skill shortages, having a workforce plan in the UK, for example around healthcare.”
So does Labour want fewer work visas issued than at present? Ms Cooper is reluctant to put figures on it, referencing David Cameron’s pledge to get annual net migration below 100,000 which has never been hit. But after repeated questioning it appears the answer is yes.
“Overall, actually, we shouldn’t have the need for as many work visas as a result of the plans that we’re setting out,” Ms Cooper says at one point. At another: “We don’t think we should be needing this many work visas because what we should be doing is improving training.”
It reflects how far Labour has moved on migration. After all, Sir Keir himself, back in January 2020 when he was seeking to be picked as Mr Corbyn’s successor by Left-wing party members, promised to reinstate European Union-era free movement rules.
*(continued in reply)*
There is nothing in there to say how they are going to solve the problem. Typical of Labour
1 million net migration in the past 2 years. Does anyone actually think in the past 2 years, we’ve built anything to accommodate that many people?
Well Yvette, if your party would at least try to give me my freedom of movement back I’d be more than willing to make a contribution of my own and fuck right off out of here.
‘Reluctant to put figures on it’
So many words with very little being actually said. Nothing on what they would actually change with the visa system, what requirements would they make tougher etc. It’s exactly the same playbook from both sides now to rile up a base knowing nothing will be done, because we need immigrants. Last major policy change was over a decade ago when they went after spouses. There isn’t anything left to squeeze, we already have one of the toughest visa systems in the world. Regarding asylum, sort out the backlog and hire staff which would give them their increase in rejections/removals (if that’s what they’re so desperate for).
Smoke and mirrors when we need to be debating the NHS, cost of living and housing. Instead we’ve got ‘hurricane’ Braverman spouting nonsense and Labour taking the bait.
An article on Labour from the Torygraph.
No agenda in that, I bet.
TBF we did replace largely European migrants with non European migrants who may or may not have large families that they rightfully bring over as well with UK schemes where a company can bring in people to do the job for 80% of the wage a Brit would be paid for. In the past when we were in the EU people would be migrating into the UK as well as people migrating out of the UK onto mainland Europe in almost equal measure. We have now lost that ability for the majority of people in the UK.
Remember when they all held up the ‘#RefugeesWelcome’ signs… what changed, Yvette?
8 comments
*Shadow home secretary shows how far party has come since pledges on free movement as she vows to use her experience to make ‘serious’ change*
By Ben Riley Smith, Political Editor and Charles Hymas, Home Affairs Editor
Memories of elections gone by clutter the walls of Yvette Cooper’s parliamentary office.
Above the desk is a fading photograph of Ms Cooper beaming as she steps out of a car, red balloons among the greeting party, during the triumphant 1997 campaign. Another wall has a leaflet bearing the candidate’s name and a Labour rose smudged with inky fingerprints.
Two vast posters date closer to the Labour Party’s creation. One depicts a woman with an infant swaddled in her arms, declaring “mothers vote Labour”. The other shouts: “Men and women workers, your chance at last!”
The images are a reminder both of the Labour Party’s historic feats and more turbulent recent past. Just a single Labour politician born in the last 100 years has won a general election: Tony Blair. It is a head-stretching statistic, one that speaks of how the country fell out of love with Labour – and one that Sir Keir Starmer is determined to defy.
**Party’s rollercoaster ride**
Ms Cooper is all too familiar with her party’s recent rollercoaster ride. “I’ve spent 13 years in government, 13 years in opposition,” says the MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford who first won her seat as the New Labour dawn broke in 1997. “I can tell you which I prefer.”
Labour activists gather in Liverpool tomorrow for the annual party conference filled with a palpable sense that all that could be about to change. With the next general election most likely just a year away, Labour sits 16 percentage points ahead of the Tories in polling averages – a vast lead that would result in a big House of Commons majority if replicated on polling day.
Ms Cooper, as shadow home secretary, would under those circumstances be one of the most senior politicians in the country, the occupier of a great office of state in the first Labour government for more than a decade.
But they are not there yet. And so Ms Cooper, in an exclusive pre-conference interview with The Daily Telegraph, projects the message that Labour is a party which has serious plans for government.
“Having been a cabinet minister, having been a minister in government for many years working on all kinds of different policies, I know what it’s like when people are serious about government, serious about actually delivering things, serious about changing things, when the focus is properly on the country and putting the country first,” says Ms Cooper, who rose to the Cabinet under Gordon Brown.
**Tories putting themselves first**
“What we saw last week [at the Tory conference] was the Conservative Party really putting themselves first and just talking to themselves. Actually for the challenges the country faces, but also the opportunities Britain has, we have to put the country first. It’s what you see in Keir and his determination, his leadership, the changes that he’s made in the party.”
Under a Labour government, Ms Cooper explains to back up her point, police will be told to identify Britain’s 1,000 most dangerous suspected sexual predators and put them under surveillance like terrorists.
All police forces would be told to systematically rank high-risk suspects in their areas, many of whom will not have been convicted, according to the frequency, currency and severity of the allegations of sexual violence against them.
The analysis – similar to that used by forces to track suspected terrorists and organised crime bosses – would result in them being targeted with the “full armoury” of police resources including covert surveillance, most-wanted manhunts, investigations revisiting victims to build cases, electronic tagging and social media monitoring.
The plans are modelled on a pilot launched by Scotland Yard under Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, where 100 of the most dangerous sexual predators in London have been identified.
**Repeated failure to protect women and girls**
For Ms Cooper, the issue is personal. One Labour aide says the repeated failure to better protect women and girls leaves the shadow home secretary more irate than any other issue, likening her determination to drive change in the area to Theresa May’s flagship modern slavery campaign.
Ms Cooper says: “My great-great-grandmother was living in a mining community in Whitehaven. She was attacked by her husband with a poker. It went to court and the court bound him over to keep the peace.
“Actually, that is more protection than lots of domestic abuse victims get today, because their cases don’t even go to court and they don’t even get that action. I mean, that’s 100 years ago. And yet, we’re still going around the same arguments.
“We’ve still not got the changes that we need. I’m sick and tired of women still having to worry about texting a friend once they get home because they don’t feel safe on the streets, about there still being deep failings in the policing and criminal justice system. We have to have much more substantial change.”
Sitting forward in a green fabric armchair in the corner of the office, Ms Cooper, 54, goes on to run through her positions on a host of policy areas contained in her brief.
She speaks with a quiet intensity and specificity. She has spent years thinking about home affairs issues, as chairman of the Commons home affairs committee between 2016 and 2021 – as a moderate she was exiled from the frontbench during the Jeremy Corbyn years – and then in her current role.
In a 26-year parliamentary career there have been many other positions: chief secretary to the Treasury and work and pensions secretary in the final years of New Labour; stints shadowing the Foreign Office and the women and equalities minister under Ed Miliband; and even an attempt at securing the Labour leadership in 2015 before being defeated by Mr Corbyn.
Few others in the shadow cabinet can match Ms Cooper’s governmental experience. So when she outlines a tough stance on the need to control legal migration it is eye-catching.
“Net migration is now at a record high. We expect it to come down, we think it should come down,” Ms Cooper says when asked whether net migration – which in the latest figures was around 600,000 a year – needs to be lower.
Ms Cooper goes on to defend international students coming to the UK, saying they bring “huge investment and benefits” to the country, but notably adopts a much cooler tone when it comes to visas for foreign workers.
**‘Doubling of work visas is a problem’**
“We do think it’s, though, a problem that we’ve had a doubling of the number of work visas in a very short period of time,” Ms Cooper says. “Because that reflects the failure of the Government to properly make sure that there is training in the UK, to properly make sure we’re tackling skill shortages, having a workforce plan in the UK, for example around healthcare.”
So does Labour want fewer work visas issued than at present? Ms Cooper is reluctant to put figures on it, referencing David Cameron’s pledge to get annual net migration below 100,000 which has never been hit. But after repeated questioning it appears the answer is yes.
“Overall, actually, we shouldn’t have the need for as many work visas as a result of the plans that we’re setting out,” Ms Cooper says at one point. At another: “We don’t think we should be needing this many work visas because what we should be doing is improving training.”
It reflects how far Labour has moved on migration. After all, Sir Keir himself, back in January 2020 when he was seeking to be picked as Mr Corbyn’s successor by Left-wing party members, promised to reinstate European Union-era free movement rules.
*(continued in reply)*
There is nothing in there to say how they are going to solve the problem. Typical of Labour
1 million net migration in the past 2 years. Does anyone actually think in the past 2 years, we’ve built anything to accommodate that many people?
Well Yvette, if your party would at least try to give me my freedom of movement back I’d be more than willing to make a contribution of my own and fuck right off out of here.
‘Reluctant to put figures on it’
So many words with very little being actually said. Nothing on what they would actually change with the visa system, what requirements would they make tougher etc. It’s exactly the same playbook from both sides now to rile up a base knowing nothing will be done, because we need immigrants. Last major policy change was over a decade ago when they went after spouses. There isn’t anything left to squeeze, we already have one of the toughest visa systems in the world. Regarding asylum, sort out the backlog and hire staff which would give them their increase in rejections/removals (if that’s what they’re so desperate for).
Smoke and mirrors when we need to be debating the NHS, cost of living and housing. Instead we’ve got ‘hurricane’ Braverman spouting nonsense and Labour taking the bait.
An article on Labour from the Torygraph.
No agenda in that, I bet.
TBF we did replace largely European migrants with non European migrants who may or may not have large families that they rightfully bring over as well with UK schemes where a company can bring in people to do the job for 80% of the wage a Brit would be paid for. In the past when we were in the EU people would be migrating into the UK as well as people migrating out of the UK onto mainland Europe in almost equal measure. We have now lost that ability for the majority of people in the UK.
Remember when they all held up the ‘#RefugeesWelcome’ signs… what changed, Yvette?