Gordon Brown has announced he is backing Yvette Cooper in the Labour leadership contest. In a statement on his website, the former Prime Minister has revealed Cooper will be his first preference vote, while Andy Burnham will be number two and Liz Kendall number three.
It’s a surprising move, given that Brown delivered a barnstorming speech on the state of the contest just over a week ago and declined to back any particular candidate. Without naming him, Brown was railing against Jeremy Corbyn and appears to have decided Cooper is the best person to beat him. His predecessor Tony Blair has also intervened in this contest but so far has yet to reveal which candidate he is backing. Plus, it’s very late in the contest for Brown to throw his weight behind Cooper. The ballot papers have already hit doormats and thousands have already decided who to vote for. But his last minute endorsement will put more pressure on Ed Miliband to say if he’s backing anyone, but it’s unlikely he will cave in — for one thing, he is currently on holiday in Australia. But this endorsement suggests that Cooper really is keeper of the Brownite flame, something she has done little to dispute. Brown is speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival this weekend, where he will deliver a speech discussing the future of Scotland and presumably discuss this decision in more detail. P.S. In Damian McBride’s memoir Power Trip, he imagines a future with Brown, as an elder statesmen, visiting his proteges Miliband and Balls in Downing Street after the 2015 election. How differently things have turned out…‘If Labour is in power after the 2015 election…with Ed Miliband installed as Prime Minister and Ed Balls as Chancellor, I’m sure they’ll invite Gordon to the first Downing Street Christmas party, and get him to tell his ‘Japanese Admiral’ joke for old time’s sake, and perhaps the three will reflect on how far they’ve come – and how much has changed for all of them since they first started working together in Gordon’s opposition office twenty-one years before.’
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