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Yvette Cooper blamed for council losses: “wouldn’t know what democracy was if it scratched her eyeballs”

Local councillor links lost seats to Cooper’s anti-Brexit activities
Yvette Cooper (image: BBC)

Centrist former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has been blamed for losses in her home area during last week’s local elections.

Cllr Steve Tulley – a hero of the miners’ strike – hit out at Ms Cooper’s actions after retaining the seat he has held since 2011 but watching a number of his Labour colleagues lose theirs.

Mr Tulley attributed the losses to Ms Cooper’s :

There have been some wonderful candidates who’ve lost tonight and it’s all because of the MP for Pontefract, Normanton and Castleford, who wouldn’t know what democracy was if it scratched her in the eyeballs.

It’s time them down in Westminster started to take a bit of notice to what people have said. It’s their antics that have cost us tonight.

Tulley blamed Ms Cooper’s anti-Brexit position on the difficulties Labour faced in an area that voted strongly in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016.

The SKWAWKBOX contacted Yvette Cooper for comment but she had not responded by the time of publication.

SKWAWKBOX view:

A working-class hero sent a message to Westminster. ‘Westminster’ won’t listen, but Labour must.

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38 comments

  1. These people don’t care about democracy because they know they could never get rid of Corbyn using it.

  2. She’s been in a safe seat for 22yrs. Time for a change. The trouble is she is not part of the community and was parachuted in by Blair. I’m from Pontefract and she was my MP for a time. All MP’s need to be challenged they should be selected every four years and selection should be an automatic process.

    1. I am with you 100% on auto reselection, how to get this through Conf 2019 is the question , someway must be found to do it…

  3. Some parasites do not harm to their host, but the Remainers are killing us with the electorate.

    1. Technically that’s known as ‘utter bollocks’.

      What is clearly making a difference is the perception of Labour as weakly farting about without a real policy.

  4. I’ve had arguments with Cooper – but Tulley’s feverish babbling is sheer twattery.

    The miner’s strike reference? 35 years ago. And, without painfully excavating what happened, bluntly – it was a massive defeat.

    1. What is your problem with a reference to the fact that Mr Tulley was a hero of the Miners Strike? Any man who was out on strike for a year, who stood up against Thatcher and the state’s unlimited resources – financial and otherwise – and who was stabbed in the back by Neil Kinnock and is still standing is a hero to me. His words carry weight because he knows what real hardship is. He faced it in solidarity with his brother miners and came out the other side.
      I find your arrogant dismissal of this man and what he and others endured utterly reprehensible.

      1. Once again, we’re off on the fairy tale track. I wasn’t dismissing ‘the man’ – I was dismissing his pretty stupid remark.

        As to the strike – what I was dismissing was Skwawkbox’s flip and pointless virtue signalling by mentioning it in this context, and pretending that the mention of this historical defeat imbues a stupid remark with some kind of authority.

        I really don’t need any lectures about that time, nor am I going to ponce around by giving credibility to knee-jerkery about it. I saw the damage and divisions close up (and, no, by ‘divisions’ I don’t mean the obvious). I watched the police training and then going off in a cavalcade every night. I saw friends ground down and taking years to retrieve anything like what they had, and the violent disagreements that have lasted for years.

        … which is why I find flip virtue signalling repulsive when it exploits a tragic defeat that echoes down the years. The story isn’t simple – and it needs books, not cheap exploitation – the mining communities were subjected to enough of that.

        Back to the original remark – it is just gormless. A bit like celebrities playing with hunger in Africa as they strut their stuff.

        … and it isn’t new (unless you adhere to the MSM’s definitions)

      2. Your comments were nasty and uncalled for RH. I doubt if the friends you claim you saw ground down would appreciate them.

      3. “Your comments were nasty”

        No they weren’t at all. Simply observations callinjg out irrelevant virtue-signalling. What elements are ‘nasty’, pray?

      4. If you can’t see the nastiness of your uncalled for comments then I’m sorry but I can’t help you.

    2. As someone who stood in a mining village in Northumberland and watched the miners return to work ,led by the colliery band ,with their heads held high after being starved back to work,you RH are a disgrace.

      1. In this case I wholeheartedly agree with you RH , just shameful

      2. As someone who stood in outside a pit in Cannock and watched the miners return to work, still shouting ‘scab’ at those who had been starved back before the end, I find RH’s remarks extremely pertinent. He doesn’t deserve insults. They get us nowhere.

      3. Just as a brief addendum : I suggest you read my remarks as from someone coming from, and also representing, what was a largely mining ward, which had its core employment trashed, and a major proportion of its public housing sold off.

        It became one of the notably poorest wards in the UK.

        You might then understand my irritation about flip knee-jerk generalising, sentimentalising, patronizing. and fictionalising. ‘*the* ‘working class’.

    3. Hmm, the miners strike.

      I find myself wondering how many of the people _you need_ to get the EU result you desire hail from areas smashed by the Tories (and Tory Bliar afterwards).

      These are the poor saps fighting one another for a crappy dead end minimum wage job, and you dismiss it like it’s nothing…

      I have to say this (sadly), you deserve the misery of losing what you desire most, so that you _might_ gain some empathy to those who have suffered previously.

      1. See my reply. I don’t need any advice from one who boasts ‘Never voting labour again’.

      2. I don’t boast. What is it with some of you here?!?!

        Its a username. An avatar. For all you know, it could mean North Vietnamese Liberation Army.

        I clicked the link for your name. Good job really, as I’ve often found myself believing that RH stood for Right Helmet.

        I’m more of a socialist than most here, and certainly wouldn’t be insulting to any miner or their cause. Because I don’t trust or believe in Labour anymore does not mean I don’t believe in socialism or democratic process

        Finally, start taking the time to read things properly. There’s no advice in my post for you…

      3. “… certainly wouldn’t be insulting to any miner”

        What do you mean? You wouldn’t argue that someone twas talking bollocks because they did a pretty shitty manual job?

        How patronising..

      4. @RH

        You’ve already been called put by plenty…

        Kid spelt backwards describes you best.

      5. Out, not put… (Stupid autocorrect)

        And for the record, I’m a manual worker, so I have solidarity with anyone who does a similar job. Miners in particular do a risky job, with many documented health risks, and to top it off, dont even get to feel or see the sun during their long shifts.

        If anyone is patronising, it’s you “mate”

  5. What else can we expect from someone wedded to a colossal weirdo who’s now reduced to almost eating sh*t to get tv appearances?

    I’m certain I read somewhere that they had their guests pay for their own seats at their wedding reception. That told me enough about them.

  6. Yvette Cooper is a total embarrassment – from her woeful performance in the 2015 leadership race offering us more of the same failed policies to her grandstanding in parliament in 2017 in anticipation of the wipe out that never happened.
    She really believes she is leadership material and it appears to me that every thing she does is geared towards furthering her ambition to lead the party one day. She needs to accept that the party has found itself and its roots again and there is no possibility that we will ever revert to New Labour politics. I agree with Christopher Fox above – if after 22 years in a safe seat Yvette has not made herself part of the community then its time for change.

  7. I’ve no time for Cooper or any of her right wing mates but for Skwawky or any of his fellow Leaver fanatics to criticise anyone for being anti-democratic is hypocricy in the extreme.

    1. F**k me – Imagine being stuck in a lift with jack t & yvette cooper?

      You’d come out making andy murray look positively hyper-ecstatic ffs.

      1. Providing you still had the will to live, of course.

      1. Well, even if she’d tried I’d have expected the child(ren) to have taken one look at her & the weirdo and then flatly refused to go anywhere with them.

  8. I wish somebody could make a case for taking the same side on Brexit as Farage and T Robinson. What possible benefit is there? Why should 5 million UK/EU residents have their lives ruined?

    1. I wish somebody could make a case for taking the same side on Brexit as Cameron, Blair, all the banks and multinationals. What possible benefit is there, beyond profit? Why should 60 million people have their lives ruined? You’ll end up in the EU but with absolutely no chance of Corbyn ever becoming PM and fulfilling the change that this country needs. Well done!

    2. Labour has 40 socialist Labour MPs, 160 opportunists and 70 Neo-Liberal Blairites.
      Left wing democratic socialists need to select 620 left wing democratic socialist candidates in my view.
      I voted remain reluctantly to try to EC wide collectively break Neo-Liberalism but this lost and we have thus to break Neo-Liberalism via independent nation states.
      The people have spoken in a peoples vote and if those that lost disagree then as Brecht argued you will have to find another public!
      We need a Labour Brexit which maintains workers and environmental rights.
      A customs union on our terms so UK companies can trade with Europe (50% of our trade) tariff free and eliminates the need for the Irish backstop.
      Have democratic control labour supply (migrants needing job offers) and we could take workers we need from any country in the World which is internationalist.
      Have democratic control of capital supply (Govts had these two rights Pre – Neo-Liberalism) so we get good capital (good well paid jobs with trade unions) and not bad capital (zero hours, exploitative gig economy).
      Bring back migration adjustment funds for councils (scrapped by the Tories and Lib Dems).
      Trade unionise migrant workers and thus gain better pay and working conditions for them (some may live in appalling barrack dormitories) and this will help build community solidarity.
      The problem is some take a UK centric view and their own constituency view without thinking of the bigger picture – have you ever thought of the impact on the countries migrant workers come from (as we get all these mainly young and healthy free workers who even pay their own bloody fares to get here) but that would entail socialists whist thinking as a UK citizens also thinking more globally.
      Neo-Libealism I would argue has always stopped a significant number of the left from dreaming, and perhaps with an EC captured by Neo-Liberalism it has also prevented some from imaging an internationalism outside of a EC Neo-Liberal framework.
      Perhaps it’s time to start dreaming again!

      1. Thanks for those numbers. I have been trying to formulate a list for ages, but found it too difficult.

    1. Precisely. And that’s why I get wound up by fake virtue-signalling that tries to use the miners’ strike as validation of crap ideas.

      I remember the same sort of parasitical posing behaviour from the sidelines when it was actually happening.

      The shambles over Brexit is lining up to be another historic defeat by the Tory right.

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