Last week the SNP MP Mhairi Black gave her maiden speech to Parliament. The young politician inspired the nation with her story of a man in her constituency who came to her crying after a trip to the job centre went wrong:
‘I said to him “how did you get on?” And without saying a word he burst into tears. That grown man standing in front of a 20-year-old crying his eyes out.’
The clip went viral, amassing millions of views worldwide, with Black’s words highly commended by both SNP and Labour politicians alike. So much so that their were whispers of concern at Labour HQ that it could trigger certain members of the party to lurch even further to the left.
So Mr S was intrigued to hear Yvette Cooper give an interview to the Today programme this morning. Asked by John Humphrys to prove that she had a vision for the Labour party should she be elected as leader, Cooper opted to recount a story about a woman she met who had also cried:
‘There’s a woman in my constituency, on polling day she’s got a thousand pounds of bedroom tax areas, and she came up to me to ask for help in tears on polling day. I said to her ‘please just go and vote today, this is what we’re campaigning for’. She went and voted, she voted Labour, she voted for us but we lost the election.”
Now, Mr S has no doubt that Ms Cooper’s story is completely true – her team are keen to stress that she has used it before. But don’t be surpassed if we hear more Labour MPs talking about weeping voters. Or whatever the SNP’s talking about.
It’s an open secret that Harriet Harman is worried about the SNP’s influence on her party; that she thinks they hear the nationalists do their socialist-Braveheart routine and then think: Freedom! Let’s vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
So the Labour leadership turns into who can best imitate the SNP. On this issue, at the very least, Ms Cooper has the edge.
Comments