Off with their Eds! Yvette's in town

eyesee

Brilliant! Keep it up. I love these stories pretending Yvette Cooper is anything other than the out and out lightweight she has always been. This woman, like so many Labour women is dangerous and deluded. She is dim in the extreme and always out of her depth. She does however, like telling other people what to do, whilst not including herself in the rules. Hence the falsity over her claims for which house is the second home. An ideal socialist.

JohnPage

Out here in reallifeland she looks like a humourless harpie apparatchik.

Philip Walker

An unnamed Tory minister with both Cooper and Balls as opposite numbers? Ooh, that's an invitation to play Parliamentary Guess Who?

Jeremy

Melissa Kite:

"Harman was not a fan of Balls..."

We already knew that.

"And many Tory MPs worry privately that this plucky woman might discombobulate David Cameron across the dispatch box, especially since the Prime Minister is so anxious not to be seen as misogynist."

I'm currently having difficulty with the title of a play. I cannot decide between 'Calm Down, Dear' or 'Stitch That, You Bitch'. Which do you prefer?

‘“The difficulty for Yvette is that she would be seen as a puppet,“ says one party insider...'

I see her more in the way of a strictly limited, gimlet-eyed dolly...which I suppose isn't all that different from a 'puppet'.

David Ossitt

“Can Cooper save the Labour party?’ it asks. ‘Is she Labour's Iron Lady?”

What a silly, if not to say stupid question, of course she is not, nor will she ever be.

Apart from the fact that she is a lightweight; she is also married to one of the most distrusted politicians in the country, who would be unable to resist being as it were a back seat driver.

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

I think we can see what her judgement is like based on her choice of partner. She married one of Brown's head thugs. That is the last sort of person we want leading one of our major parties!

Other than that she is just not very genuine. Her media appearances are riddled with transparent deception and misrepresentation. Should she become leader of the Labour party the 'Brownie' will pale into insignificance in comparison to the 'Cooperism' (perhaps she learnt it from Hilary with her 'mis-speaking').

I think the most frightening things is that such a mediocre poltician as Cooper could be perceived as a potential leader. Clearly there is so little talent in the Labour Party these days (Brown got rid of it) that they are not worth supporting

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

Labour has never deposed a Leader

Er well they pretty much deposed Blair. He didn't leave of his own accord. He was shoved out of the door by Brown and his thugs.

salieri

For one glorious, mad moment, under para. [2], I thought she used to dream of being a lap dancer. But it was just my bad eyesight.

I read on: "[4] - The case for Cooper." Come off it. There isn't one. "Plucky"? Aggressive, yes - plucky no. Ok, you don't expect a sense of humour from New Labour's apparatchiks, but her ceaseless yapping conveys a sense of self-righteousness which even Harpic would find tiresome.

Heartl;ess Curmudgeon

Looks like an old cod metal suit made by a boiler maker.

Speaking of old boilers . . .

Woody

Not much of a choice is there? All of them tainted by being ministers in the last government.

All of them failures in their own way.

NO THANKS.

Cynic

"As a child, far from reading Hansard under the bedcovers, she dreamt of being a tap dancer." What a pity she didn't persevere with that dream! It would have been Westminster's gain.

Simon Stephenson.

She's a tunnel-visioned Big Statist, like virtually the entire Labour Party, most of the Lib Dems, and a sizeable group of Cameron's Conservatives. None of these people is of more use than a chocolate teapot to a country that is in desperate need of less bureaucratic intervention, not more of it.

Cynic

Both Cooper and Harman epitomise the problems that occur when women are promoted on a quota, simply because they are women. Whatever happened to the meritocracy?

JohnPage

Also, what did she ever achieve as a minister? All I remember is the reviled Home Information Packs. And even then she had to be helped by her boss, who was pretty useless herself.

Tiberius

I'm with eyesee on this, but I do think Cameron would have a problem if Labour's leader was any or all of female, bl***, bearded and gay.

Should Ed go after 2015, and Labour go down that route, the Tories should then send for the Master of the Uni-inverse, Boris. He could also dispose of Salmond while he was at it.

REPay

She has exactly the right degree of competence, chippiness and faux-warmth to qualify her as leader of the Labour Party. She pretends her mother was a char lady I believe, and she has a sort of northern/estuary accent. They'll love her...

I was wondering what the socialist equivalent of Mrs Thatcher might be. Spend! spend! spend! and sticking it to the toffs. If she has such a good sense of humour why did she marry Balls...nothing funny there.

Ostrich (occasionally)

WIlliam Blakes Ghost 19th, 7:09pm

"Er well they pretty much deposed Blair. He didn't leave of his own accord. He was shoved out of the door by Brown and his thugs."

We-ell, its a point of view. You could, however, believe that, by late 2006, Powell had pointed out to him how quickly the chickens were coming home to roost and that it was time to do a bunk, as sharply as could reasonably be contrived, without it appearing so.

Stu

Oh sorry Evette who?

Alan Douglas

Only Melissa Lightweight could ask such a stupid question about this party-line spouting moron being like Margaret Thatcher.

Hie thee back to the Telegraph dear, and don't bother the grown-ups.

Alan Douglas

Fergus Pickering

O)h come on eyesee. ALL politicians like telling people what to do. That is why they are politicians.

EC

"Is Cooper's time now? Or 2014?"

Hopefully NEVER!

Let us not forget that it was this particularly talentless woman (and not the equally egregious Ruth Kelly) who was the architect of the equally useless House Information Packs.(HIPs) HIPs amounted to an extra tax of £600 on anyone selling a house. HIPs swelled the ranks of government sanctioned clipboard waving box tickers.

What an awful woman, what an awful pair. (I meant Cooper and Balls)

Austin Barry

The comments here clearly underestimate Ms Cooper.

By serving under Ed Balls she has shown that she can withstand great pressure and is prepared to assume responsibility for difficult and distasteful tasks.

Go to it, gal.

Tarka the Rotter

We neither want or need Mortisha Cooper or Gomez Balls, thanks very much. As for being Labour's Iron Lady, she's more like the Fabian's Tin Lizzie.

John Hall

‘Labour has never deposed a leader.'

Clynes, Lansbury????

idle

Anyone who has developed the verbal tic of saying "because it's the right thing to do" every third sentence when on telly clearly isn't the right sort of person to be running the country.
Mind you, the civil servants say she is brighter and less unpleasant than her husband.

tb

Surely she'll be too busy maximizing the money she can claim from the people.

Amazing how many multi-millionaires you get from modest backgrounds after a few years in parliament.

alexsandr

stop calling her cooper. She is Mrs Balls. She just keeps the Cooper name so she isnt tainted by Ed Bollocks.
And harpie should be called Mrs Dromey. Mebbe cos she dromes on and on!

Andy Carpark

Austin Barry: 'By serving under Ed Balls ...'

And by serving at the feet of Ed Balls she has shown that she knows there is a time to keep silence and how not to choke at the crucial moment.

Frank P

tb

Tony Blair I assume? Thank you for that piece of inside info.

Btw Don't know who was quoted as saying 'labour has never deposed a leader' but whoever did must have a very short memory, eh Tony?

salieri

Andy CP,

A thoroughly disturbing thought, as you no doubt intended. But remember, one swallow doesn't make a summer.

HampsteadOwl

Not that this means history will repeat itself, but Margaret Thatcher was subject to all kinds of patronising comment of the sort posted here when she was standing for, and after she was elected as, Conservative leader. Her record in office up to that point hadn't been that great either.

There is a certain irresistibility about it though, especially when you read comments like salieri's about his Yvette Cooper lap dancing fantasies. Perhaps he's been misled by the very odd caricature fronting the Spectator piece which rather suggests Ms Cooper has the build of Ann Widdecombe. If she ever did get into exotic entertainment, Cooper's best shot would be to audition for pole dancing - as the pole.

Frank P

The picture in the cartoon flatters all three of the ugly bastards.

Jeremy

Hampstead Owl:

"Not that this means history will repeat itself, but Margaret Thatcher was subject to all kinds of patronising comment of the sort posted here..."

Which is rather the point, isn't it?

I am old enough to have been well and truly alive in the eighties, and I do not recall the Left being either discreet or circumspect in its use of language about Margaret Thatcher. This having been so obviously the case, they are hardly in a position to complain now if the sauce is poured over one of their own.

After all, what's sauce for the goose....an' all that.

TrevorsDen

As far as I can see Cooper has shown no inklings of leadership abilities and has been totally anonymous as a labour politician, and comes across when she does say anything as a moaning whining harpie.

No matter what anyone's view of her though, if she were to become leader of the labour party she would find she need a whole lot more than that. Which is of course why with Balls behind her she would be so compromised. Balls would inevitably be the man fixing things in the background. No wonder Labour sources are so suspicious.

IanB

"...an entire room is given over to memorabilia of her husband’s life in politics. Pictures of Ed Balls hang on the walls..."

Not so much an office as a chamber of horrors!

tom jones

I used to think she was impressive, but I was wrong. She's weak and knee-jerk. She attacks police cuts, but then says Labour would be cutting only about 8% less than us (so not a world of difference then?!) She may be the best woman in Labour's shadow cabinet, but that's not saying much. I actually rate Caroline Flint above Yvette because even though I disagree with her 99% of the time, she's always passionate and speaks normal language not political language.

Biggestaspidistra

I remember Yvette Cooper on Channel 4 presiding over the destruction of Castleford town centre with a mad project that involved a hack American landscaper paid handsomely with public money and the unanimous disgust of the local populace. Worthy of East Germany.

HampsteadOwl

@Jeremy

Not my point it wasn't.

You're talking about the left attacking Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s. I was talking about all the jibes upon her inadequacy and unfitness for office as a woman which flowed when she first became Tory leader in 1975 - many, if not most, of them from her own party. By the time the left really got hammering into her, it was certainly not because they saw her as an insipid non-entity.

As it turned out, the insults from all sides were the fuel that Mrs Thatcher ran on. Whether the same turns out to be true of Yvette Cooper time will tell, though personally I don't see it. The difference seems to be that people are talking about Cooper as a future leader because she is a woman, whereas Thatcher's gender at the time was seen as the biggest obstacle to her doing well.

dorothy wilson

Cooper always strikes me as a mardy kid - to use the vernacular from this neck of the wood. She's fine when she can be on the front row trying to demonstrate how brilliant she is. But when anyone stands up to her or catches her out she goes off in a sulk.

dean

did she keep her surname when she married because she did not want to be called
Iveate Balls

Downtown

I've not seen much of her but what I have seen she appeared to be much more impressive than anyone else on Labour's front bench with the exception of (now backbench) David Miliband.

Just because she is typically lefty ideological and doctrinaire to the exclusion of common sense, and thinks there is an endless font of money to shower the idle with largesse doesn't mean she is not a formidable prospect.

Quick off the mark and not easy to rattle I'd put her close to the head of the pack. Of course I could be wrong.

Electable? Not sure.

DavidLondon

Yvette Cooper seems to me to be utterly mediocre. As far as I can see she achieved nothing as a minister except to waste huge amounts of time and money on the Home Information Pack scheme. Nor do I recall her saying anything even slightly original or interesting. All she merely parrots her party's line in an unsympathetic way.

If this is the Labour party's best hope they are in serious trouble.