Yvette Cooper’s return strengthens Labour and Sir Keir Starmer ahead of election – Bill Carmichael

On the plus side the Shadow Cabinet certainly looks more competent and well briefed than at any point during the chaotic Corbyn years.

Particularly welcome is the return to the front bench as Shadow Home Secretary of Yvette Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, and probably the best leader Labour never had.

Cooper has remained on the back benches since she challenged for the leadership – coming third behind Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Burnham – after Ed Miliband resigned in the wake of the 2015 General Election defeat.

It is frankly baffling that a politician of her experience and capabilities languished in the background for so long, especially considering the dearth of talent on the Labour side.

Her performances in the media and the House of Commons, where she chaired the Home Affairs Select Committee with distinction, were consistently streets ahead of most of the Shadow Cabinet.

I’d expect her to give Priti Patel a run for her money, except for one glaring weakness. Labour’s position, and Cooper’s personal stance, on immigration is a million miles away from those of the ‘Red Wall’ voters Labour has to win back if it is to regain power.

Cooper will have her work cut out to convince those voters that Labour will be tougher on illegal border crossings than the Conservatives.

But with competent characters such as Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Lisa Nandy and Jonathan Ashworth on his front bench team, Sir Keir is in a much better position to offer voters a credible alternative government.

However, the party still faces massive problems – and one of them is right at the very top of the party. It is clear that there is little love lost between Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner.

In his last reshuffle in May, he tried to demote Rayner and she kicked up such a massive fuss that he ended up placating her with lots of fairly meaningless titles.

This time the news of the reshuffle emerged when Rayner was due to give a key speech on “Tory sleaze”, and it quickly became clear that she had very little idea what her boss was doing. Since then there appears to have been a vicious briefing war between the two camps.

One thing we learned during the Blair-Brown years is that if the two most senior people in the party go to war with each other it will spell disaster. But Sir Keir can’t simply sack Rayner – she is elected by the membership and has her own mandate.

So this running sore will continue to fester and divert energy from opposing the government and convincing voters to give them a chance to govern.

Another problem for Labour is that the Shadow Cabinet represents the last gasp of die-hard Remainers. Most of them campaigned vigorously to overturn the democratic vote to leave the EU in 2016.

Indeed, Sir Keir himself was the architect of Labour’s “second referendum” policy which proved such a catastrophic error in the 2019 General Election, and handed Boris Johnson an 80-seat majority.

David Lammy, for example, promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary this week, is a pro-EU fanatic who once compared Tory Brexiteers to Nazis.

It is precisely this kind of attitude that contributed to Labour’s heavy loss two years ago, and Sir Keir must be hoping that Lammy speaks with a bit more caution in the future.

Indeed, if the correct lessons are learned from 2019, the Labour leader should ban any talk of rejoining the EU or holding another referendum. Brexit is done and dusted, and reopening that old wound is not a realistic electoral strategy.

In recent weeks Labour has started to perform much better in the opinion polls, with some surveys even giving them a narrow lead.

This is encouraging for the party, but at this point in the electoral cycle they should be miles ahead, particularly considering the damage inflicted on the Government by allegations of sleaze.

So Labour are in a better position 
today than they have been for over ten years – but there is still a long way to go before we see Sir Keir on the steps of Number 10.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app, receive exclusive members-only offers and access to all premium content and columns. Click here to subscribe.