Labour leadership hustings - Webchat with Yvette Cooper TODAY Friday 24 July at 2.30pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

Ahead of the Labour leadership election, we’ll be hosting webchats with all four candidates - Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall.

Due to the candidates’ busy schedules (it’s like herding cats), we haven’t been able to get everyone in one room at the same time, so we’ll kick off tomorrow with Yvette Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and Shadow Home Secretary, who will join us for a live webchat on Friday 24 July, 2.30pm - 3.15pm.

In the last Labour government Yvette served as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Housing Minister. She is a big fan of Dr Who and the Sound of Music. She has three children, and (as you probably know) she’s married to Ed Balls, Labour’s former Shadow Chancellor.

Before the general election, Yvette launched Labour’s Women’s Manifesto with Harriet Harman and Gloria de Piero, featuring the infamous ‘pink bus’ (or ‘magenta bus’ if you’re that way inclined). She has been involved in policy issues ranging from violence against women and compulsory sex ed, to immigration, policing and national security.

Please join us for the webchat at 2.30pm tomorrow if you can, or post a question for Yvette here in advance if you can’t.

Labour leadership voting is open until Thursday 10 September and the ballot results will be released on Saturday 12 September.

Thanks

MNHQ

Hi Yvette

I've long been a supporter of yours

But, it is obvious Jeremy Corbyn is appealing to a lot of labour and would be labour supporters, me included.Why is there such a concern about a move to the left and an anti-austerity vote? A similar stance obviously served the SNP well in Scotland in the last election (and a move to the left might regain some of those lost labour voters).

There is real anger and frustration that labour has not been offering enough of an alternative to the Tories/Lib Dems.

What would you say to persuade the would be JC voters to support you instead?

Hello Yvette,

In addition to the above on Labour's stance on the welfare cuts, what is your stance or idea for the future of welfare? Do you want to keep the current cuts, cut more, or introduce new or different supports or systems? This includes the cliff edge effect in benefits - you earn a bit extra but benefits get reduced to the point where the real income increase is negligible. I think when moving off of benefits it is right that claimants pay more and more with their increase in income, with the benefits gradually decreasing, but at the moment it isn't gradual and people can find they are worse off due to increases in costs brought by working more versus drop on benefits, or even simply benefits being cut by more than their extra earnings. Most people can't access massive pay rises and may be at their income rate for some time, so it's not like people can simply leap frog the cliff edge.

Hi yvette,
As a mum of 3 & a gp I would like to know what your views on the proposal for 7/7 access to general practice
Personally I don't feel it is necessary & actually creates 'want' rather than a need to see a dr at weekends. (Ooh is a useful resource if managed correctly) Also I know it will impact on family life for many gps.. Esp since there are not enough drs to implement this currently...
Thanks for answering this

I'd like to know why you abstained from voting on the welfare bill too. An MP is their constituency's elected representative and to not bother to represent them is pretty poor, tbh.

Hello Yvette

I am appalled at the way this government is attacking the most vulnerable. I believe that only an anti austerity labour alternative will address society's inequalities. You were probably my second choice after Jeremy Corbyn and I told your representative this on the telephone. After your abstention on the welfare bill you have lost my vote and I now do not intend to identity a second preference. I have lost faith in your integrity. What can you say to change my mind?

PS I will be working during the Web chat but I do hope my question is addressed.

Hello Yvette

what in your view is the point of the Labour Party - what distinguishes it from the Tories and the SNP?

Yvette, thanks for coming on. I'm interested in why your team decided to push the fact that you're a mother - the implication being that your reproductive status makes you better qualified to lead the Labour Party. The logical corollary - that a woman without children is less qualified - is both ludicrous and sexist, and does none of us, mothers or not, any favours. Anything which implies that any particular quality or set of qualities inheres in a woman's biology is unhelpful, surely - this is what we've been fighting against for centuries.

You may well argue that the point was not aimed at Liz Kendall - but if your team failed to spot that it would be read as a direct criticism of her, and play to the 'women are their own worst enemies' narrative, then you need a new team!

Yvette, do you think that the proposed coup if JC wins is a good demonstration of democracy?

Hi Yvette. I joined the Labour Party after the election because I want to support a credible alternative to the Tories. Since then I've been bombarded with emails and messages asking for my opinion about x or y, or inviting me to things. (I saw Sophie Heawood was complaining of similar in Saturday's Guardian).

The messages seem to be obsessed with communicating with me - but communication without content is a bit meaningless.

So Yvette, what do you actually stand for?

Hi Yvette,

Some say that, as Tony Blair dropped Clause 4 and the hold of the unions over the Labour Party is weaker, that the Labour Party is no longer required now we have an established welfare state. How do you feel about moving centre right and ceasing the incessant nannying practised by previous Labour governments?

Another one wanting to know why you abstained on the welfare bill...

The recently released budget is going to hit the poorer sections of society more than anyone else, even worse the welfare reforms target people with disabilities and the working poor, whether you agree with austerity or not, those reforms are not financially motivated but ideologically driven.

What is the point of an opposition party if it doesn't oppose anything? Especially something that should be causing outrage in a party that tells people it's left of centre.

Hi Yvette

Are calls for Liz Kendall to step down right, should she step down?

Hi Yvette,

Why do you think it is that Labour lost nearly 40% of its voters between 1997 and 2010 (down from 13.5 million to 8.6)? Does this not suggest that Labour voters eventually became disillusioned with Blairite policies (either, like myself, joining the Greens instead, or thinking that they might as well just vote "proper" Tory, rather than the watered-down version)?

It is also clear that there is a serious split (if not in the Parliamentary Labour Party, then certainly amongst the wider membership) over the direction that the Party should take. How would you, as Leader, set about dealing with / reconciling such divisions?

I would also be interested in knowing the answer to Woeface's question about reproductive status as a qualification for leadership. I thought this hit a new low for political campaigning (pink bus also very disappointing).

The voting abstention seems of very poor choice and your voting record appears to have some strange flip-flop, e.g

On 5 Nov 2014:
Yvette Cooper voted against cutting the income tax rate applied to those earning over £150,000 a year. Show full debate
On 4 Mar 2015:
Yvette Cooper voted to increase the top rate of income tax.

www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10131/yvette_cooper/normanton%2C_pontefract_and_castleford/divisions?policy=6681

this makes it very difficult to understand if you are tory lite and if so would the conservative party not be better suited to your views? Can you explain this?

Another Labour voter here especially keen to understand why you abstained on the Welfare Bill.

Hi Yvette

I am a member of the Labour Party and as yet undecided as to who to vote for. I will be busy working during the live webchat but hope you will answer my question.

I work for the NHS in Child and Adolescent Mental Health services. The Coalition repeatedly promised to improve the accesibility and quality of mental health care and to address the lack of parity between mental and physical health services. Sadly, mental health is still very much the 'poor relation' in the NHS with inpatient beds and early intervention/preventative services in the community being slashed.

Do you agree that it should be considered a national scandal that children who need inpatient treatment for serious mental illnesses are increasingly having to be admitted to hospitals 200+ miles away from their homes and families, or to Adult Mental Health wards where they risk exposure to potentially distressing and inappropriate situations that will almost certainly exacerbate their difficulties? These scenarios are becoming all too common in an area of healthcare where inpatient provision is woefully scarce and community services are stretched to breaking point. Frankly, we are on our knees. I would love to hear your suggestions for improving the quality and accessibility of children's mental health services.

Dear Yvette Cooper

If the Labour Party are no longer the party of the Left, what are you? Tory Lite? Lib Dem? SNP?

Is Socialism dead?

Hi Yvette,

Cathy Newman describes you and Liz Kendall as 'robotic' and 'colourless' Labour women who should be making more noise in the leadership race, in today's Telegraph.

I think it's unfair to limit the criticism to just women - many of us are tired of ALL politicians using policy line and repetition in interviews, rather than giving real answers to questions. That's probably why Dawn Butler and Kay Burley's gone viral

So - can you give us something real? An honest to goodness answer about why we should vote for you, that hasn't been prepared by a team? Thanks

I was really keen to put you second preference to Corbyn after hearing you speak at the Oxford leadership hustings. Then I came home and read about how a number of your campaigners (led by Luke Akehurst) are scaremongering and campaining for all right-thinking members to group together and ensure that they put Corbyn in 4th. I was so disgusted that I'm considering not bothering putting a second preference now.

So my question is twofold: do you support this line of attack from your campaigners? And should Corbyn be democratically chosen as leader would you support the coup being planned to overturn the result, or campaign for the stability and solidarity of the party?

Hi Yvette ... I'm an as-yet-undecided Party member. What would you say to convince me that the Party would be unelectable if it were led by Jeremy Corbyn? What is the key difference between his approach to leadership and yours?

Thanks!

Hi Yvette,

I am really interested in what Paul Mason has been saying about post-capitalism recently. I don't entirely agree with him though as I think that while what he talking about could take place, I think he massively underestimates the rigour with which traditional power structures will hang onto their control of resources (for instance ordinary people's time and energy in particular) to prevent any radical shift in structures. I think that most working people are simply too stretched by necessity to "throw things into the gift economy as side projects" for instance, as he so airily put it on the Guardian Live debate. I think that we are still stuck in a situation where the vast majority of people derive their income as employees in which they giving more and more and receiving less and less, and I think that's very hard to change because no one realistically has the opportunity not to be employed.

but I am still really interested in what he is talking about and I think the Left in general and the Labour party in particular are offering no practical, coordinated way to take advantage of real, powerful changes that are happening around us all the time and are being exploited by the Right. Eg. Technology forces workers to be always on and thereby benefits (the class we used to call) Capital. New patterns of working have weakened the esprit de corps of the traditional shop floor and the potential power of online community that can be generated instead has been totally missed. Individualism and being "pro business" is the spirit of the times and no one is offering us a realistic coherent narrative of the benefits of (any kind of) collectivism. There is nothing to take part in, nothing to contribute to, that will make any of this any better.

I feel like the Labour party is living in the past. Personally and aesthetically and emotionally I am more attracted to the distant Corbynate past than the more recent utterly cynical Blairite past. But neither is offering a realistic vision of the present or the future; or how they can be better for ordinary people.

My question to you is what can you do to bring a Labour party into the future and that can rewrite a political narrative of the Left that recognises the world we live in now, and how concertedly it is creating inequality to the advantage of a particular Finance elite, (while the old Labour ways are just too steam age to deal with that, new labour is even worse by not making any effort to deal with it at all) - and what are you going to do instead if you win?