Sketch: Newbie Cooper takes on May
Theresa May deploys a collegiate missile to pop her new opponent’s dreams.
By Ian Dunt
It’s the first time Home Office questions saw a female home secretary and a female shadow home secretary face each other across the Commons. I was tempted to talk about girl-on-girl action or make some cruel jest about the offside rule, but regard for employment means it’s now better to err on the side of caution on such issues. We’re well past the days of commenting on Jacqui Smith’s cleavage.
Theresa May is growing into the job more with every passing day. She now looks positively haggard, which is one of the key indicators of power. Her hair seems greyer than before. Her body language is not dissimilar to a one of those crocodiles you see in the zoo, its basic animal spirit quenched by good will and spectacle.
Across the chamber, the newly-installed Yvette Cooper was the very model of youth and vitality. She was really quite up for it, I thought, freed from the dull cooperative shackles of her previous foreign affairs brief. Ms Cooper/female Balls is more charming than her media profile would suggest. She began with what appeared to be a friendly, warm-hearted tone. “It’s a pleasure to be working opposite the right honourable member for Maidenhead again,” she told the Commons. “I’m sorry to not to be asking my first home affairs question of her.” Cooper then did something she would come to regret, delivering an attack on potential reductions to police numbers to one of May’s Home Office underlings. That handed the home secretary a very highly regarded weapon: the collegiate greeting.
By the time Cooper stood up the second time, she was working herself up on the government’s much-heralded but little-seen reform of control orders. “As of half an hour ago still there was no draft emergency legislation [to increase pre-charge detention to 28 days] in the library of the House,” she barked, her previously dulcet tones giving way to crude politicking. “At lunchtime today, the BBC and. Not. This. House. were being briefed that the new measures would look a lot like control orders. Mr Speaker, this is a chaotic and shambolic and cavalier process.” Now she had the pace, the tone, the pitch. It was all coming together wonderfully. Even Labour backbenchers looked impressed.
“Where is the draft legislation? Will she tell the House now what is happening with the legislation and with control orders? And will she take the opportunity to apologise for a shambolic process on such an important issue?” It was meaty Commons stuff. Roused from their traditional mixture of irritable spite and slumbering indifference, a few Labour backbenchers even let out a mild roar of support.
And then a little voice rose from the other side of the room. It was kind and slight and mousy, but unmistakably confidant and serene. It belonged, rather alarmingly, to the home secretary. “Well, first of all let me welcome the right honourable lady to her new post as shadow home secretary,” she offered, like some terrible cake covered in decorations and filled with laxatives.
May had preserved her collegiate welcome, like Gollum with his ring. She had sat there, rubbing it appreciatively, until it was at its most deadly. And then she utilised it, like a small pin pricking a rather impressive balloon.
“I’m sure she’s going to enjoy the post,” May continued, not really bothering to hide her tone. “She is the third shadow home secretary I’ve faced in my nine months as home secretary. I hope for her sake she stays longer in the role than her predecessors have.”
The attack was gone, deflated for all to see in a busy Commons chamber. Cooper will have to retain her barbs for a later date.
