This week’s Spectator cover has achieved a rare distinction: it’s going to be hung up on the wall chez Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Or at least that’s what the shadow chancellor told Sky’s Jon Craig when quizzed about it earlier. You can see the cover image itself, by Stephen Collins, to the left. And below are a few extracts from the article by Melissa Kite that it illustrates. ‘Can Cooper save the Labour party?’ it asks. ‘Is she Labour’s Iron Lady?’ And the answer… well, you’ll have to read the full thing for that. In the meantime, here are those extracts to whet your appetite:
1) Office space. ‘In Yvette Cooper’s home, an entire room is given over to memorabilia of her husband’s life in politics. Pictures of Ed Balls hang on the walls and the room is kitted out with phone lines and computers so it can function as a nerve-centre for the shadow chancellor while he is working from home. Cooper’s office is a snug under the stairs. Anyone visiting might imagine that this was the home of a great political genius, dutifully supported by a mother of three. There is no indication that this impish, unassuming woman is herself now the bookmakers’ favourite to lead Labour into the next election.’
2) Dancing partners. ‘“The difficulty for Yvette is that she would be seen as a puppet,“ says one party insider who knows the couple well. “Whatever Ed
was doing in a shadow cabinet led by Yvette, he would be seen as the power behind the throne. And that is a major problem for her. That is the thing that would stop her being elected.“
Friends say Cooper, 42, lacks the moth-to-the-flame ambition of her husband. As a child, far from reading Hansard under the bedcovers, she dreamt of being a tap dancer. (The couple are now jive
enthusiasts, and can break into a snazzy dance routine at parties.)’
3) Harman’s Balls-up. ‘It was while working for Harriet Harman on the social security brief (she was the architect of the New Deal policy for the unemployed) that she
became romantically involved with Balls, then a young aide to Gordon Brown. Harman was not a fan of Balls and continually complained about him to her charge. She remembers ringing Cooper’s
house one day only to have Balls answering the phone. “I had to quickly revise all the things I had been saying about Ed to Yvette.“’
4) The case for Cooper. ‘But another Tory minister, who has had both Cooper and Balls as opposite numbers, says she is the more formidable opponent, both in intelligence and in
political subtlety. Also — unlike Balls — she doesn’t feel the need to fight regardless of the merits of the case. 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.’
5) Is Cooper’s time now? Or 2014? ‘Labour has never deposed a leader. But then again, as a keen student of political history, Ed Miliband will be agonisingly aware that the only opposition leaders ever to suffer worse poll ratings than him are Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Foot. Should he decide to walk the plank, he may well do so the year before an election — Labour strategists are intrigued at how Kevin Rudd became leader of Australia’s Labour party with just a year to go before fighting, and winning, the general election.’
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