Cooper originally worked for a company called W. Cooper Ltd from 1973 to 1980, before joining Littlewoods initially as a buyer when, in 1994, she became the public relations manager and then, in 1995, the group corporate communications manager. She became a project coordinator in 1999, before she left Littlewoods in 2001, when she was appointed director at the Merseyside Centre for the Deaf.
She was a member of the Liverpool Health Authority and held the position of vice chair between 1994 and 1996. In 1996, she became chair of Liverpool Women's Hospital.[4]
Cooper was elected, aged 22, to the Liverpool City Council as a Liberal councillor in 1973 and, in 1992, became the Lord Mayor of Liverpool. She remained on the council until 2000.[5]
She fought her first Westminster campaign at the 1983 general election when she was selected to contest the Conservative-held seat of Liverpool Garston as a Liberal. She finished in third place, more than 14,000 votes behind the winner, Labour's Eddie Loyden.
From 1973 to 1996, Cooper was councillor for the Broadgreen ward. From 1996 to 2000, Cooper represented the Allerton ward, before in 1999 she switched to the Labour Party, becoming a partymate to former general election opponents Loyden, Howarth and Kennedy, and stood in the Netherley ward in 2000, though she did not win and left the council that year. She contested the European Parliament elections in 2004 for Labour in the North West.[6]
Parliamentary career
Cooper became the Labour Party's candidate from an all-female short list, in the constituency of West Lancashire at the 2005 general election, following the retirement of the sitting MP Colin Pickthall. Cooper was first elected to the House of Commons at her fifth attempt and third party with a majority of 6,084. She made her maiden speech on 24 May 2005.[7] In September 2005, Cooper, as part of the Labour Friends of Israel, made an official research visit to Israel.[8] In September 2020, she was appointed a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel.[9]
On 9 August 2006, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Cooper had written to the Prime Minister's office reporting the viewpoint of some of her constituents expressed to her, that they would be appalled if Baroness Thatcher were to be given a state funeral, as a leader more politically divisive than others of the late twentieth century.[10]
In 2007, she became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ben Bradshaw, initially when he was Minister of State in the Department of Health until 2009, when she remained his PPS when he was made Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Health Select Committee.[4]
In August 2013, she became one of the few Labour MPs to vote against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, which eventually passed with cross-party support.[11]
On 26 October 2017, a 31-year-old man, Christopher Lythgoe, associated with the proscribedneo-Nazi terror group National Action, was charged with encouragement to murder Cooper, and was also charged along with six other men with being members of a proscribed organisation, contrary to section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000.[12] On 12 June 2018, Jack Renshaw, 23, of Skelmersdale, Lancashire, admitted in a guilty plea to buying a 48cm (19in) replica RomanGladius sword (often wrongly referred to in the media as a machete) to kill Rosie Cooper the previous summer.[13] In July 2018, Lythgoe was jailed for eight years for being a member of the group and his part in the plot to murder Cooper.[14]
In 2020 Cooper called for the Nursing and Midwifery Council to be "replaced with a body which can instil confidence" after a nurse, who was found guilty of bullying, was only handed a 12-month suspension.[16]
In June 2021, Cooper introduced a Private members' bill which would give British Sign Language legal recognition and enhance its use in public services.[18] The bill was backed by the government in January 2022.[19]
In November, The Times reported that Cooper was delaying her resignation in order to secure a peerage,[22] which prompted criticism from several figures such as Adrian Owens, leader of the Our West Lancashire party and former Conservative rival to Cooper in the 2010 general election who suggested that she was "inexcusably" absent from key votes in Parliament.[23]
The Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley is a metropolitan borough in Merseyside, North West England. It covers several towns and villages, including Kirkby, Prescot, Huyton, Whiston, Halewood, Cronton and Stockbridge Village; Kirkby, Huyton, and Prescot being the major commercial centres. It takes its name from the village of Knowsley, though its headquarters are in Huyton. It forms part of the wider Liverpool City Region.
Dame Louise Joyce Ellman is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Riverside from 1997 to 2019. She is a member of the Labour Party.
Jane Elizabeth Kennedy is a British politician and the inaugural Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Wavertree, formerly Liverpool Broadgreen, from 1992 to 2010.
Sir George Edward Howarth is a British Labour Party politician who serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Knowsley. He also served the seat's predecessors since being elected in a by-election in 1986, firstly as the MP for Knowsley North and then Knowsley North and Sefton East (1997–2010).
West Lancashire is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. Following the resignation of Labour MP Rosie Cooper on 30 November 2022, the seat was held by the party's candidate Ashley Dalton in the by-election held on 9 February 2023.
Liverpool Wavertree is a borough constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1997 and every election since has been won by a Labour Party candidate.
Anne Margaret Main is a Conservative Party politician who formerly served as the Member of Parliament for St Albans in Hertfordshire. She was elected at the general election of 2005, and was re-elected in 2010, 2015 and 2017. She lost her seat to Daisy Cooper, a Liberal Democrat, at the 2019 general election.
Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) is a group in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that promotes support for a strong bilateral relationship between Britain and Israel, and seeks to strengthen ties between the British Labour Party and the Israeli Labor Party. LFI says it supports a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with Israel recognised and secure within its borders, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. As of July 2020, it comprises around one quarter of the Parliamentary Labour Party and one third of the Shadow Cabinet.
Edward Loyden, known as Eddie Loyden, was a British Labour politician.
Sir William Thomas Williams, QC was a British Labour Co-operative politician.
Liverpool Broadgreen was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Broadgreen suburb of Liverpool. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The 1986 Knowsley North by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 13 November 1986 for the British House of Commons constituency of Knowsley North.
Labour for a Referendum (LfR) was a political campaign by members of the Labour Party that sought a referendum in the United Kingdom on the European Union. The movement was set up following a pledge by the Conservative Party to hold an in–out vote if re-elected in 2015 United Kingdom general election. In the election campaign, Labour Party policy was that such a referendum would be an unnecessary distraction from government priorities. Following the Conservative victory in that election, the Labour Party committed to supporting passage of a Referendum Bill through Parliament – thus achieving the result sought by this campaign.
Julie Elizabeth Cooper is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Burnley from 2015 to 2019.
Marie Elizabeth Rimmer, is a British Labour Party politician. She has previously been a local councillor for St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council in Merseyside, England, and has served as Labour leader of the council three times between 1978 and 2014. She has recently been the Member of Parliament (MP) for St Helens South and Whiston since 2015.
The 2015 Labour Party deputy leadership election was triggered on 8 May 2015 by the resignation of Harriet Harman as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom following the party's defeat at the 2015 General Election. Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, became Acting Leader following Leader Ed Miliband's resignation. Harman announced on the same day that she would step down as Deputy Leader, with her resignation taking effect when the new Leader and Deputy Leader are elected.
Rosemary Clare Duffield is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Canterbury since 2017.
A by-election for the United Kingdom parliamentary constituency of West Lancashire was held on 9 February 2023, following the resignation of incumbent member of Parliament Rosie Cooper. She announced her resignation in order to take up the job as chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. Ashley Dalton held the seat for Labour.
Ruth Ashley Charman Dalton is a British Labour Party politician and former community worker who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for West Lancashire since the 2023 West Lancashire by-election, succeeding Rosie Cooper.
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