Yvette Cooper claims the party must win back the businesswoman who said Labour ‘broke her heart’

David Cameron ‘has a woman problem,’ Yvette Cooper tells us, and she is determined to give him ‘an even bigger one’ by becoming the first female leader of the Labour party. Her ambition is to challenge him ‘personally’ to try and ‘shake up the Westminster old boys’ network and the way in which politics happens’. Cooper worries that ‘in too many areas it feels as if women’s equality has gone backwards in the last five years’, citing the fact that cuts hit women ‘six times harder than men’ and the reduction in the number of women in the cabinet as Cameron’s female ‘blind spot’.

When asked if Labour had the opposite problem in that men were turned off more by Labour at the election than women were, Cooper does not demur entirely, but suggests that ‘there’s actually more that Labour needs to do to reach out to women whose support we had during the course of the parliament but then by the time of the election we had lost again’. But she does agree that, ‘taking Ukip on is really important,’ referencing a firefighter in the leadership hustings in Nuneaton who was worried about cuts to services but ‘thought Labour wouldn’t make enough of a difference and decided to vote Ukip’. Cooper is clear that Labour needed to ‘do much more to challenge Ukip and to expose them,’ lambasting the view which was commonly taken during the election campaign ‘that Ukip somehow only take voters from the Tories which … absolutely wasn’t true’.

Labour at the last election, Cooper suggests, was ‘too narrow in different ways’. For example, ‘We did well in the cities not the towns, we didn’t do well enough on older voters’. But it is in relation to Labour’s attitude to business where Cooper feels the party needs to ‘reset our relationship’. ‘I was really struck by a senior businesswoman who I met who just said to me: “You broke my heart at the election. I wanted to vote Labour but I felt you pushed me away”.’ She cautions that this is, ‘not about shifting to the right or to the left. It’s about growing in all directions so … we carry on talking about the problems with exploitative zero-hours contracts but we also talk about growing good quality jobs for the future and working with businesses to do so.’ Cooper also criticises Labour’s narrow electoral strategy which was ‘based around Liberal Democrat votes’ and argues that ‘we should be reaching out in all directions’ instead.

Turning to her own area of policy, does Cooper share the view of some that crime was given a low priority in the election campaign? ‘The sad thing about the campaign in the end,’ she responds, ‘is that a lot of it ended up being dominated by the arguments between England and Scotland and the divisions and the separatism that was driven by both the campaigns by the Tories and the SNP’, but actually there were plenty of ‘strong policies’ in her brief. For example, focusing on ‘much higher national professional standards but also much more devolution within the policing to local communities … and communities themselves having much stronger decision-making about what the Issues are.’ Cooper remarks that it is always a challenge making public service reform ‘exciting or sexy in terms of an election campaign’.

There’s a whole series of things George Osborne or David Cameron have said that I strongly don’t agree with. There are other things that they’ve said historically that I would agree with

But she warms to the theme: ‘We need to be much more innovative in the way that we deliver more for less,’ she says. ‘Some of that should mean much greater use of digital technology.’ ‘If you talk to Martha Lane Fox,’ Cooper says, ‘there’s been some great examples of using digital technology in public services but it’s also stalled and there’s also a whole series of areas where we could do far more.’ Using her own area of policing as an example, the police ‘still have the same kind of technology that they were using 20 or 30 years ago’ and they end up ‘having to use their iPhones to do different kinds of checks’, whereas 20 or 30 years ago … their technology was way ahead of the public.’ Cooper believes that ‘using new technology to drive productivity in public services is a huge missed opportunity for all of our public services.’

Second, the shadow home secretary thinks there needs to be more ‘flexibility on local decision-making and devolution’ so that services can be shaped around ‘not just the individual’ but ‘around the family and the community and around the pinch points in their lives.’ For example, ‘we used to have nothing between when the midwife goes home and when the child goes to school on their first day,’ but Sure Start was introduced which helped to bridge that gap. ‘You can think of other pinch points in families’ lives … for example, when someone in the family finally succumbs to dementia and needs care’. As for how we rebuild Labour’s economic credibility, Cooper returns to her earlier espousal of technology and suggests Labour needs ‘a vision of the future and understanding the way the economy is going to change in the future in the way that we did in 1964’ with ‘the white heat of technology’ but instead we have ‘the white flashing constellations of the digital age’. This means thinking about ‘what those exciting jobs should be for the future, and how you get everybody the chance to be part of them.’ She continues: ‘Why can’t you do just as many of those new high-tech digital jobs and start-ups in towns as in cities? Why is it that 98 per cent of coding is being done by men? Why is it that this is still seen as very much a young person’s opportunity, why aren’t people in their 40s and 50s getting the chance to learn coding or how to design apps and so on?’ She refers to ‘fantastic examples in the States of much more accessible ways for people, whatever their age, background and circumstances, to learn the new high-tech skills of the future … we’re not doing that enough here.’

In respect of getting the deficit down, Cooper is adamant: ‘We know that the debt and the deficit have to come down; they’re too high. That does mean there’s going to be tough decisions over the next few years.’ ‘Labour are going to have to … make cuts in public services in some areas and also we need to recognise that budgets are going to be tight for some time to come.’ Displaying her cost-cutting credentials she remarks, ‘I’d already identified about £800m of cuts you could make without hitting frontline policing, without hitting police numbers, and without hitting the number of border staff.’

This kind of talk as leader will be followed by accusations of ‘austerity-light’ and risks being likened to the Tories’ position by the party’s left and supporters of the Green party. Is it therefore fair game to suggest other candidates had ‘swallowed the Tory manifesto’ as Cooper did on the Andrew Marr programme? The ‘debate across the party is about saying “Well, what do you think Labour values are?” and part of it is about saying “Well, here are some of the things that the Tories say and do we agree with them or don’t we?”’ ‘There’s a whole series of things George Osborne or David Cameron have said that I strongly don’t agree with. There are other things that they’ve said historically that I would agree with.’

We challenge Cooper about her claim that members should not choose ‘the new but untested and naive option’, rather like Gordon Brown’s ‘no time for a novice’ 2008 putdown. She is bullish in response: ‘I think this is a tough job, really tough job’, and cites her ‘experience of running a multibillion-pound department’. Cooper warns that this ‘job audition’ is ‘for the Labour prime minister, not simply for a Labour leader of the opposition. In the end it is important that we show we can be an alternative government from the start.’ What does she think about the call made by the GMB to ‘outlaw’ Progress? She retorts, ‘It’s clearly nonsense, it’s ridiculous’. ‘If we’re not going to be inclusive we won’t win the next election and then we will let everybody down. There is too much at stake for us to just have a narrow strategy either within the party or without.’

Finally, how would she summarise her pitch? ‘I was born in Scotland, brought up in England, my family are all from the northern coalfields, I went to a comprehensive school in Hampshire, my first job was driving a tractor, my kids go to school in a very diverse school in a big city. I love the diversity of this country but it needs to be something that strengthens us as a country and not pulls us apart and I am very keen to do that.’ ‘We can win but we can only win if we do so together and we build that broad coalition together.’