Yvette Cooper Urged To Enter Labour Leadership Race

Yvette Cooper is being urged to stand in the forthcoming Labour leadership election amid concerns that the contest will be dominated by men, HuffPost UK has learned.

Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham have so far confirmed that they plan to challenge Keir Starmer, who has also insisted he will run.

However, female Labour MPs want Cooper, the foreign secretary, to throw her hat into the ring should a contest be triggered.

Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last month, has said he is ready to challenge Starmer as early as next week.

Burnham, who is on course to win tomorrow’s Makerfield by-election and return to Westminster after a nine-year absence, has also said he will run in any contest.

Meanwhile, Starmer himself has repeatedly insisted that he will not “walk away” from No.10 and plans to stand as well.

Unlike the Conservatives, a woman has never led Labour – and Cooper’s supporters say party members should at least have the option of having a female candidate on the ballot paper.

One party source said: “The female Parliamentary Labour Party are concerned that so far, all the leadership talk has been about men.

“There needs to be a woman on the ballot paper and the outstanding candidate is Yvette.”

Cooper, who has been an MP since 1997, is one of the few Labour MPs to have served in both the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments.

She ran for the Labour leadership in 2015, but came third in the contest, behind Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn.

Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has also eyed a run for the Labour leadership, but many of her allies on the soft left of the party have now thrown their weight behind Burnham.

Starmer has said he is ready to offer Burnham a top job in his cabinet if he wins in Makerfield.

But the Manchester Evening News said he would turn down any job.

A Burnham campaign source told the paper: “The benefit Andy has is the wind of change for not having been associated with the government’s failings.”

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