The heckler rumbled and pouted but Yvette kept out of the fray
WE HAD a tiny venue for Yvette Cooper’s big speech about the European refugee crisis. The organisers had just about managed to squeeze four short rows of chairs into a room which was two-thirds the size of a squash court. The front row had as little leg-room as the rear of an MG.
About 30 of us crammed into this pod to hear Miss Cooper suggest that Britain should give homes, jobs and welfare support to 10,000 asylum seekers, mainly from Syria. She chose to put it in terms of ten families per town/council/borough. If every area took ten families, Britain could ‘do its bit’ to stop the suffering of refugees.
‘I’m asking the Prime Minister, I’m asking Scotland and Wales, I’m asking councils, I’m asking communities, I’m asking faith groups, I’m asking campaigning organisations, I’m asking everyone,’ said shadow home secretary Cooper. She gave a little nod of the chin, and a stabbing, northern-English ‘a’, each time she said ‘asking’.
The blue eye shadow was retro, almost Barbara Cartland, but the delivery was modern: Australian- style uplifts and a husky whisper when she was describing some of the terrible deaths suffered by migrants.
It was our ‘ moral’ duty to help them, she argued, concluding: ‘I’m asking Britain to be Britain.’ Good line.
SHEis also asking Labour members to make her their leader. Hygienically, perhaps realistically, she did not mention that much yesterday.
When the chap from ITV News tried to question Miss Cooper about the leadership contest and some arguably pro-Islamist remarks made by her rival, Jeremy Corbyn, he was interrupted by a cross woman beside him.
‘We’re not here to hear about Jeremy Corbyn, for goodness’ sake!’ snapped this heckler, who proceeded to rumble and pout for minutes.
Yvette kept out of the fray. She was determined to be positive. This was no time for being partisan, she declared.
When candidates in party leadership elections abjure partisanship, it may be a sign that they have given up or that they are being craftily superior, in a way that might make it hard for Mr Corbyn to sack Yvette from his top team.
Repeatedly yesterday she called on the Government, particularly the Home Secretary, to ‘show some leadership’. Connoisseurs will relish this ploy. What it means is ‘by calling on the minister to show leadership, just look at me, I am in fact the one who is showing leadership!’
Lest we miss this palpable self-beatification, she added: ‘ I’m not going to make the normal political speech. I don’t want to attack others over this. I want to persuade everyone. I don’t want this to be a party political row because I want our British Government to show leadership now.’
Our host was the Centre for European Reform, a pressure group whose sympathies may be gleaned from its blue-flag emblem and a glance at its advisory board. This august body includes such pro-EU groupies as Lords Kerr and Hannay and Roland Rudd (London’s pro-Brussels troika), former BBC reporter Stephanie Flanders and Oxford University’s professor of European Studies, Timothy Garton Ash. European Studies, indeed!
The centre’s director, Charles Grant, a biographer of Jacques Delors, had opened proceedings by saying that the migration crisis could only be solved if we remained in the EU.
MISSCooper swallowed and repeated this claim. It was by some distance the least persuasive aspect of a speech which, in other respects, was honourable, bold and Christian, though naturally it did not admit that last characteristic.
She said that ‘we need to argue for things which won’t be popular with everyone but if we come together we can do that’.
This will be hailed by some as statesmanlike consensus. It could as easily be viewed as the plea of a flailing political class which is seeking a common, unpopular position on the ‘safety in numbers’ principle.
If major parties agree on defying public opinion it may reduce their electoral vulnerability. But have the Ukip and Corbyn insurgencies not tainted that theory?