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

Is that it? are we done? I was hanging on for one final answer....surely it is coming? I can almost feel the internetz shaking as it approaches...like a railway line before the train comes....

@woeface

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!

I think this is a manufactured row which in the end has sexism at its heart. Talk about whether someone is a working mum, a stay at home mum, or has no children is too often interpreted as a criticism of other women or used as a reason to divide women from each other. It should never be.

Rachel Reeves was told she couldnt be a Cabinet Minister because she had a baby, Liz Kendall and Theresa May are criticised for not having children. Some women are criticised for going out to work when the children are small. Others are criticised for staying at home instead. Its outrageous, and we shouldn't fall for it.

Women should be able to talk about their lives without it being used against other women. Being a working mum is part of who I am - its why I rarely do breakfast meetings so I can do the school run and its also why I didnt stand for the Labour leadership in 2010, because the children were much younger.

We still have a long way to go in changing attitudes. As we've seen today, people still suggest women arent strong enough to do the top jobs whether they have kids or not. How wrong they are.

@SetPhasersTaeMalkie

I'm going to echo textfans question a bit.

If you were Labour leader what would your strategy be in Scotland to regain the voters' trust?

Thanks SetPhasersTaeMalkie.

It breaks my heart to see a shift towards the politics of separation. I visited Scotland days after the campaign began, talking to members as well as those who left us to vote SNP.

We need to understand the profound challenge we face in Scotland and I want to back Scottish Labour plans to rebuild from the grassroots.
But I also think we should champion our shared values – in the end we should care about children living in poverty whether they are living in Aberdeen or Bethnal Green. And it is part of the Labour party’s founding principles that we are stronger if we stand together than if we leave each other to sink or swim alone.

Thank you everyone for posting such great questions. I’ve tried to reply as fully as I can and sorry to those who I didn’t manage to reply to this time. Hopefully we can do this again soon.

In the meantime if you want to find out more about me and my views or you want to follow along with my leadership campaign or maybe even get involved then follow the links below, check out my website and follow me on facebook or twitter:

www.yvetteforlabour.co.uk
twitter.com/YvetteForLabour
www.facebook.com/YvetteCooperMP

Thank you for all the answers!

Thanks for taking the time to come on Yvette - good luck

@IceBeing

gosh-feeling properly told off now

Far from it! JaneMumsnet is far too nice for that.

Thanks for participating in the webchat, hope you can join us for the next leadership hustings webchats too.

Not one question about fracking, climate change, environmental issues :-(

Or sufficient explanation of the abstention.

Well why didn't you ask a question about those things then?

Not a great range of answers. Seems to have been to the Harriet Harman school of slow typing to avoid answering more questions. Hasn't got my vote.

That was all she could answer in an hour?

There was a climate question...but it didn't get answered.

I agree this seemed a little slow going for a webchat...I wondered if all the responses were getting vetted before release...

Really underwhelmed.

Im not sure exactly what the Labour Party offers me anymore. I seem to have this romantic notion that they represent me just because I am a public sector worker.
Frustrating.

I think her answer about women in politics was good but everything else seemed a bit insipid . . .I don't know if that's because my attitude to her has changed after the abstention or if it's because, as she is a leadership candidate, her answers have become blander since her last webchat.

I was impressed and thought she said things you wouldn't expect from the highly scripted and spun politicians we're used to.

I actually also thought she did pretty well in volume considering she was typing herself and the answers were pretty long.

But then she answered my question so I'm probably pretty biased!

So Chazzer do you think you'll vote for her now instead of Jeremy?

She's always been my first preference. Then I waver to Jeremy as I think we need something to shake things up, shift the Overton window, perhaps radical change is there in our grasp. It'd be risky but then perhaps that's the only answer, stating middle of the road with no place carved outside of Tory rhetoric is risky too. But then every time I read something from Yvette, I'm back in her camp. I think it'll be Yvette 1, Jeremy 2 for me. Unless Jeremy starts talking a lot more about women and children. But even then he has no history in that area so I 'd be sceptical.

YY I see what you mean. I'd also like to see a woman leading the Labour party . . .but I can't shake off my concern about the abstention and the fact that she has completely misread the situation in Scotland.

Still, my view is irrelevant since I'm not a member of the Labour party. I hope you do get a decent leader who can carve a strong position. All of UK politics is the poorer without a strong opposition.

venusian I did.

RTT

Oh and I'm not moaning about my thread not being answered so much as the fact that there are so many issues are stake in our country and some are being discussed at the expense of others which are more important longer term.

Sootballs I did RTT - but the post of yours I responded to appeared to be a criticism of the questions we were all asking not of her answers. Since you said 'not one question...' But I did actually miss that you had raised the issue of fracking because it came at the bottom of a post containing several quite aggressive demands (I want to know...etc).

I'm also a bit that you reckon your issues are more important and more worthy of being answered than anyone else's in this thread. Perhaps though if you had just asked the question about fracking rather than going on about the health service and the abstention (both of which are issues which have had lots of attention) first, you might have got an answer.

Don't be patronising

Just back from the Lakes today
Thanks for answering my question
We're living off crisps for lunch as I'm knackered after the 5 hour drive
Was a lovely few days away though - I'll be looking out for your caravan next time we're up there
I guess I ought to be thinking about supper ....

Good luck for the leadership contest
I really like that I get the feeling you want to be leader and PM for what you could do, not primarily for personal ambition