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.
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With reluctance – but enticed by its surprisingly starry cast and the fact that it had landed, ironically enough, on Netflix – I recently tuned in to The Hour, the BBC’s 2011 political drama series. It’s about a BBC TV news programme being launched in 1956, against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis. And, goodness
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