Yvette Cooper says she won’t rule out standing for Labour leader

Yvette Cooper has warned that Jeremy Corbyn has no alternative plan for the country’s post-Brexit future, in a speech in which she said she would not rule out standing for the Labour leadership should the position fall vacant.

Speaking before the result of a no-confidence vote in Corbyn’s leadership, expected at 5pm on Tuesday, Cooper said time was running out for progressive opposition figures to begin setting out their stall for what a departed UK should look like.

The former shadow home secretary, who lost to Corbyn when she ran for the leadership last year, said the Labour leader, “who cannot even fill a shadow frontbench” was not the man who should be at the table representing the party while the Conservatives shaped a new deal with Europe. 

“There is a political vacuum just when political leadership is needed most,” Cooper said in her speech at the Centre for European Reform. “We are here without a plan because politics has failed. No alternative government. No alternative plan.”

Cooper said there was a sense of urgency and Corbyn had not shown “any of the campaigning zeal our party needs in a tough fight”.

“He is losing us Labour support across the country – and particularly in the towns and coalfields that built the Labour movement in the first place.”

In an address akin to a manifesto, Cooper said there needed to be a voice for the opposition in the Brexit negotiations, calling the newly announced unit headed up by Oliver Letwin “a joke”.

She said she had written to Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, to ask him to trigger the process for access talks for opposition parties, saying Labour needed to be in the room to oppose “the libertarianism of campaigners like Dominic Raab who would keep us out of things like the European arrest warrant … Tories like Priti Patel who want a bonfire of workers’ rights.”

Crucially, Cooper said the access should be for the “official opposition”, raising the spectre that rebel MPs could band together as an opposition party in the House of Commons, even if Corbyn remained the leader of the party. 

She said she had asked Heywood herself, not via Corbyn. “Jeremy Corbyn is not the person who should be having those access talks later on when they are established. I have done so because I think it is so important, given the situation we are in. Parliamentarians more widely need access to what the options are. Parliament can’t be sovereign if parliament is blind.”

The no-confidence vote follows a concerted effort to force Corbyn out over the weekend. There have been 20 resignations from the shadow cabinet and at least another 20 from other party positions by MPs demanding he steps down for the good of the party and the country.

Andy Slaughter was the latest to resign, on Tuesday morning, after declining the offer of a role in the shadow cabinet.

Diane Abbott, the new shadow health secretary, said the vote had no status under the party rulebook. “It has no meaning,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “MPs don’t choose the leader of the Labour party, the party does.

“I think it is really sad that colleagues have chosen to stage this three-ring circus because they don’t want to have a leadership election because they are not certain of winning a leadership election. The way to resolve this is to have a leadership election.”

Earlier, Dame Margaret Hodge, who began the process of a vote of no confidence, said MPs were angry about Corbyn’s failure to campaign with enthusiasm for the UK to remain in the EU. The former chair of the public accounts committee urged Corbyn’s close allies to ask him to resign with dignity.

“This is the time when friends should come up to the mark and say, this is in the best interests of the party. The country needs strong opposition and a clear route forward,” Hodge said.

Corbyn was voted in as opposition leader last September on a landslide after the rules were changed to allow people to become members for £3 each. His allies believe he can win a second leadership election following the influx of new, leftwing members. 

One campaign organisation, Momentum, has claimed it can mobilise 100,000 Corbyn supporters and install several telephone phone banks for a leadership campaign.

However, many Labour MPs say there has been a backlash by members against Corbyn because of his alleged failure to perform during the referendum campaign and last month’s local elections.

On Tuesday, the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror joined the calls for him to quit for the sake of his party and the country.