Yvette Cooper attacks Labour rivals over ‘Tory manifesto’

In an apparent jibe at the Blairites’ favourite Liz Kendall, she sharply criticised “colleagues” who she said seemed to think that because they had lost the general election they had to accept the Tories were right.

She also appeared to take aim at leadership frontrunner Andy Burnham – who warned that Labour had appeared “soft” on benefits claimants – saying it was wrong to “stigmatise” people who were out of work.

Read more: What do Labour's leadership candidates stand for?

Her comments came as interim leader Harriet Harman ruled out calls for whoever wins the contest to succeed Ed Miliband to face a fresh election after three years so that they could be removed if they were not up to the job.

The proposal had been seen to favour Ms Kendall as the least experienced of the candidates who may have had a better chance of winning if she stood again later in the parliament.

Watch Ciaran Jenkin’s report on the Labour leadership from May 29.

Ms Harman also announced that veteran former cabinet minister Margaret Beckett would head up a “truth and reconciliation” inquiry to carry out a detailed analysis of what went wrong in Labour’s disastrous general election campaign.

I will set out ideas for the future that don’t just involve swallowing the Tory manifesto. Yvette Cooper

But even as she insisted that the party would not “tear ourselves apart” in the course of the post-mortem, Ms Cooper was mounting a thinly veiled attack on her rivals.

“I will set out ideas for the future that don’t just involve swallowing the Tory manifesto and set out a Labour vision for the future,” she told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show in comments that were quickly seen as an attack on Ms Kendall.

“I think some of our colleagues in some of the discussions have been thinking that ‘OK, because Labour lost the election, therefore what we have to do is say that the Tories were right on things.

“We do have to win back people who voted Tory and win back people who voted Ukip but I don’t think that necessarily means just swallowing the Tory manifesto.”

‘Tory trap’

She also appeared to take issue with Mr Burnham after he said last week that Labour had appeared to be “soft” on people “who want something for nothing”.

Ms Cooper said: “What I won’t do is fall in to what I think is a Tory trap of using language which stigmatises those who are not working. I don’t think that is about Labour values.

Mr Burnham told Channel 4 News that the party needs to change in 2020:

Mr Burnham, meanwhile, insisted that he was best placed among the candidates to re-connect the party with voters who turned away from them at the general election.

He warned that they could not assume they had hit their “lowest point” and there was a danger that they were becoming “increasingly irrelevant” to the public.