Charles Moore recently wrote in his Spectator Notes that a candidate’s looks matter in leadership elections. While discussing the Labour leadership hopefuls, he noted that Liz Kendall ‘looks like a nice person, but not in a distinctive way’ whereas there is ‘something quite appealing’ about Yvette Cooper’s ‘slightly French crop and black and white dresses, especially when she is so boring that one looks rather than listens’.
Not everyone was charmed by Moore’s critique, with many defending the ladies’ honour online and Nicola Sturgeon even intervening on Twitter.
Tell me this is some kind of bad spoof – Have Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall got the looks for a leadership contest? http://t.co/JAz3hsPKtn
Now Cooper has responded to Moore in an interview in this week’s issue of The Spectator. Speaking to Mr S’s colleague Isabel Hardman, Cooper says the remarks were ‘the most hilarious old-buffer politics’. Fortunately, they didn’t leave her particularly worried:
‘The most absurd and outrageous thing.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
This week Lucy Powell, leader of the House of Commons, did something unusual for a politician: she spoke from the heart. Her dismissal of the rape gangs as a ‘dog whistle’ was no gaffe. It was not a ‘blunder’. It was a brutally honest expression of the government’s exasperation with this pesky scandal. It was
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in