On 13 May 2015, Cooper announced she would run to be Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election following the resignation of Miliband.[1] Cooper came third with 17.0% of the vote in the first round, losing to Jeremy Corbyn.[2] Cooper subsequently resigned as shadow home secretary in September 2015. Cooper was the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee from 2016 to 2021.[3] As a backbencher, Cooper repeatedly sought to extend Article 50 to delay Brexit. She became shadow home secretary again in Starmer's shadow cabinet in November 2021.
Cooper was selected as the Labour candidate to contest Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 general election. She was elected as MP for Pontefract and Castleford with 75.7% of the vote and a majority of 25,725.[9] Cooper made her maiden speech in the Commons on 2 July 1997, speaking about her constituency's struggle with unemployment.[10] She served for two years on the Education and Employment Select Committee.
At the 2001 general election, Cooper was re-elected as MP for Pontefract and Castleford with a decreased vote share of 69.7% and a decreased majority of 16,378.[13]
Cooper was again re-elected at the 2005 general election with a decreased vote share of 63.7% and a decreased majority of 15,246.[16]
After Gordon Brown became prime minister, Cooper was invited to attend cabinet meetings as Housing Minister. Shortly after taking the job, she was required to introduce the Home Information Pack (HIPs) scheme. According to Conservative columnist Matthew Parris, Cooper conceived HIPs, but avoided direct criticism for its problems because of her connection with Brown.[17] In July 2007, Cooper announced in the House of Commons that "unless we act now, by 2026 first-time buyers will find average house prices are ten times their salary. That could lead to real social inequality and injustice. Every part of the country needs more affordable homes – in the North and the South, in urban and rural communities".[18]
Cooper as Minister for Housing in 2007
In 2008, Cooper became the first woman to serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury where she was involved with taking Northern Rock into public ownership. As her husband, Ed Balls, was already a cabinet minister, her promotion meant that the two became the first married couple ever to sit in the cabinet together.[19]
In 2009, Cooper was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and took over leading on the Welfare Reform Act 2009 which included measures to extend the use of benefit sanctions to force unemployed people to seek work.[20] Many campaigners – including the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) – urged Cooper to rethink Labour's approach, arguing instead that increasing support for job seekers was vital to eradicating child poverty.[21][22]
In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Cooper had changed the designation of her second home twice in two years. Following a referral to the parliamentary standards watchdog, Cooper and her husband Ed Balls were exonerated by John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner. He said they had paid capital gains tax on their homes and were not motivated by profit.[23] Cooper and Balls bought a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington, North London, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire); this qualified them for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance, of which they claimed £24,400.[24] An investigation in MPs' expenses by Sir Thomas Legg found that Cooper and her husband had both received overpayments of £1,363 in relation to their mortgage. He ordered them to repay the money.[25]
Before Balls announced his candidacy, he offered to stand aside if Cooper wanted to stand, but Cooper declined for the sake of their children, stating that it would not be the right time for her.[27][28] She later topped the 2010 ballot for places in the Shadow cabinet, and there was speculation that the newly elected Labour Leader Ed Miliband would appoint her Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.[29][30] She instead became Shadow Foreign Secretary.
In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, although not in the top 20.[33]
In 2013, she proposed the appointment of a national commissioner for domestic and sexual violence.[34] She spoke at the Labour Party Conference in 2014 about eastern Europeans who were mistreated by employers of migrant labour.[35]
And remember David Cameron's pre-election pledge that child tax credit is "not going to fall." It was a lie. This is a shameful betrayal of parents working hard to support their kids and get on in life. In the twenty-first century working parents shouldn't have to go to food banks to put a hot meal on the table, as too many families now do.[36]
Cooper speaking at the 2016 Labour Party Conference
At the 2015 general election, Cooper was re-elected as MP for Normanton, Pontefract, and Castleford with an increased vote share of 54.9% and an increased majority of 6.7%.[37] After the election and Ed Miliband's resignation, she was nominated as one of four candidates for the Labour leadership. Cooper was nominated by 59 MPs, 12 MEPs, 109 CLPs, two affiliated trade unions and one socialist society.[38][39][40]The Guardian newspaper endorsed Cooper as the "best placed" to offer a strong vision and unite the party while the New Statesman's endorsement praised her experience.[41][42] Former prime minister Gordon Brown publicly endorsed Cooper as his first choice for leader, as did former home secretary Alan Johnson.[43][44]
During the campaign, Cooper supported reintroducing the 50p income tax rate and creating more high-skilled manufacturing jobs. She proposed the introduction of a living wage for social care workers and the construction of 300,000 houses every year. Cooper disagreed that Labour spent too much whilst in government.[45]
Following the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, Cooper returned to the back benches, after nearly 17 years on the front bench.[46] Building on her existing work on the European refugee crisis, Cooper was appointed chair of Labour's refugee taskforce, working with local authorities, community groups and trade unions to develop a sustainable and humanitarian response to the crisis.[47][48] She spoke about the issue at Labour's annual conference in 2016.[49]
After a vote of MPs on 19 October 2016, Cooper was elected chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, gaining more votes than fellow candidates, Caroline Flint, Chuka Umunna and Paul Flynn.[3] As chair, Cooper launched a national inquiry into public views on immigration[51] and, after an emergency inquiry into the Dubs scheme for child refugees, criticised the government's decision to end the programme in February 2017.[52][53]
At the snap 2017 general election, Cooper was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 59.5% and a decreased majority of 14,499.[54][55]
Cooper was critical of the May government's infrastructure plans' focus on big cities, and was formerly the chair of Labour Towns, a group of Labour MPs, councillors and mayors of towns seeking to promote investment in them – publishing a town manifesto in 2019.[56][57]
In April, Cooper tabled a private members' bill, again with the intended effect of preventing a "no-deal" Brexit.[61] The Bill was voted to be discussed as an important bill using processes often used for issues of national security. MPs voted 312 to 311 in favour of allowing her bill to be fast-tracked, and it was made law on 8 April 2019.
Following allegations that Suella Braverman had breached the ministerial code by sending secure information with her private email, Cooper asked for possible security implications to be investigated. She wrote to Simon Case "I am urging you and the Home Office to now urgently undertake such an investigation [into possible security breaches] as the public has a right to know that there are proper secure information procedures in place to cover the person who has been given charge of our national security."[62][63] Cooper said that it raised doubts about the Prime Minister's judgement. She also added that people need to be able to trust the home secretary with highly sensitive information and national security.[64] Cooper said that the Conservative Party lacked ethics and adequate standards.[65]
Following Labour's victory in the general election, Cooper was appointed home secretary by Starmer in his government on 5 July.[68] On 7 July, after Starmer confirmed that the Rwanda asylum plan had been scrapped, Cooper announced that the Border Security Command would be established in order to help reduce small boat crossings across the English channel.[69][70]
On 29 July 2024, a mass stabbing occurred at a dance studio in Southport. Three children were killed, and ten other people – eight of whom were children – were injured. Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old male, was arrested at the scene, and has been charged with three counts of murder, ten counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article. The attack took place at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop. In late July and August 2024, far-right protesters rioted in various parts of the country in response to the stabbings. Cooper stated that she was concerned by the incident and described the emergency services' response as courageous.[71] Cooper additionally visited Southport the following morning to lay flowers and meet officials and community leaders.[72] Starmer also visited the same day and laid flowers at the scene, and was heckled by some members of the public.[73] According to The Independent, Cooper is "reviewing whether the far-right English Defence League [...] should be made a proscribed terrorist organisation", after its connection to the riots,[74] a suggestion echoed by Rayner.[75]
Cooper has published two books, entitled She Speaks: The Power of Women's Voices and She Speaks: Women's Speeches That Changed the World, from Pankhurst to Greta, released in November 2019 and October 2020, respectively.[78][79]
Pontefract is a historic market town in the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district in West Yorkshire, England. It lies to the east of Wakefield and south of Castleford. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the towns in the City of Wakefield district and had a population of 30,881 at the 2011 Census. Pontefract's motto is Post mortem patris pro filio, Latin for "After the death of the father, support the son", a reference to the town's Royalist sympathies in the English Civil War. Small villages and settlements in the immediate area include Stapleton.
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Jon Hedley Trickett is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Normanton and Hemsworth, previously Hemsworth, since 1996. He was Shadow Lord President of the Council from 2016 to 2020 and served as Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office from 2011 to 2013 and 2017 to 2020. He was the Labour Party National Campaign Coordinator under Jeremy Corbyn from 2015 to 2017.
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Normanton was a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Pontefract and Castleford was a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until the 2010 general election. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Morley and Outwood was a constituency in West Yorkshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was a constituency in West Yorkshire of the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. It was represented by Yvette Cooper of the Labour Party for the whole of its creation. Cooper served under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown alongside her husband Ed Balls, and served as Shadow Home Secretary under the leadership of Ed Miliband. Having served as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, she is once again the Shadow Home Secretary.
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Edward Michael Balls is a British politician, broadcaster and economist. He served as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families from 2007 to 2010, and as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011 to 2015. A member of Labour Co-op, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Normanton and later for Morley and Outwood between 2005 and 2015.
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↑ "Home secretary Yvette Cooper on 'awful' Southport incident". Sky News. Retrieved 29 July 2024. I have been in contact with the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner and the Merseyside mayor to convey my support to the police and our thanks to the police and emergency services for their swift and courageous response.
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