ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well right now politics is anything but predictable.  Who would have guessed even a few months ago that Jeremy Corbyn would become a frontrunner in the Labour leadership race?  Well now pundits say he is all but certain to be announced the winner next weekend but of course we could all be wrong, again.  Yvette Cooper has been making up ground in the past week and showing the passion that some said she lacked earlier on in the campaign.  Here’s Yvette arguing with Jeremy Corbyn at Thursday’s leadership hustings hosted by Sky News.  

YVETTE COOPER:  If we are really going to be able to deliver the schools, the hospitals, the transport infrastructure, we’ve got to be credible enough to properly pay for it.  We cannot do that if you just promise to print money we haven’t got.  It’s dishonest, it’s false promise, we’ve got to offer people real hope.  

JEREMY CORBYN: Are we going to go back to Private Finance Initiative with the 600% cost of investment in schools and hospitals because that surely is a model that has failed.

YVETTE COOPER: Your plan is private finance on steroids.  

DM: Some real passion there as you can see but will it be enough to beat the man Tony Blair says would lead the Labour party to annihilation, Jeremy Corbyn?  Well the Shadow Home Secretary and Labour Leadership candidate, Yvette Cooper, joins me now and a very good morning to you.  Have you seen that back that clip?  Some more of that kind of passion, more fire in your belly and perhaps you might have been doing it better.

YVETTE COOPER: Well I feel there is a lot at stake.  We’ve just got another four or five days of people voting, there’s a lot of people that still haven’t voted but actually the decisions we make in the Labour party now in the next four or five days will affect the next ten years.  This is our chance about whether we can win the next election, about whether we can do well in the Welsh elections, the Scottish elections next year and it’s so important.  There are so many people who depend on a Labour government and we will be letting them down if we rip that chance up.

DM: But those are points you have been making throughout the campaign but as you know, you’re a seasoned election campaigner, in any election it’s also about the manner in which you do it, it’s that – as I described it – the fire in your belly which seems to have come to your campaign late.  You’ve talked about the energy in the campaign and most of that you would admit, up to this point, has been on the Corbyn side.

YVETTE COOPER: Well you know, to be honest actually we’ve had people debating across the country.  We’ve had meetings, we’ve had events across the country, we’ve had a lot of support both from MPs and from nominations, from constituency parties across the country.  Of course the closer it gets to the final deadline, the more energy there is because people are actually really seeing now the ballot papers in front of them and remember, so many people have still not voted, tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands.

DM: What’s your estimate on how many haven’t voted?

YVETTE COOPER: Well we heard as of the middle of last week, half of the members and supporters had still not yet voted and I think a lot of people are considering this really carefully.  They don’t want to rip up our chances of winning the next election, they don’t want us to be just standing on the sidelines because it’s not enough to be just angry at the world, we’ve got to be able to change the world, we’ve got to have both the radical ideas for the future and be credible enough to put them into practice otherwise it’s as I was saying in that debate, it’s false promise, not real hope and it’s real hope that Britain desperately needs.

DM: You’re definitely not giving up, you don’t think Corbyn’s across the line already, you disagree with the bookmakers and the pundits?

YVETTE COOPER: The thing is with the bookmakers, that just reflects where people are putting their bets and there’s no hotline from Paddy Power to the hearts of the Labour party members and as for the polls, well you and I probably both made a vow on May 8th never to believe a political opinion poll ever again.  So I don't think people should do so now, people are still deciding.  Every vote I am fighting for and will do right up to the last minute because I think this is so important.  

DM: And second preferences as well, it’s a complicated voting system as you understand and what do you make of this from a senior figure within the Kendall camp, saying exclusively ‘Vote Cooper, get Corbyn’, Andy Burnham is a better second preference.  

YVETTE COOPER: Well I think there are a lot of other people who have been supporting Liz Kendall who are saying something completely different so I think this just gets into playing games around tactical voting when the truth is there is a straight choice.  Do we want to have the Labour party go with what Jeremy has been saying and going back to the 80s or the 70s?  I don't think those are radical ideas for the future.  And what I’m saying, which is a strong alternative both to George Osborne and to his 40% cuts which I will oppose and have the strength to oppose, but also in opposition to what Jeremy has been saying about just printing money when the economy is growing because that’s not a credible way to do it.  We’ve got to be strong enough not to swallow the Tory myths, not to go down that track but also to be credible enough ourselves and not to just make things up as a way of pretending we can solve problems.

DM: And if it is Jeremy Corbyn or indeed even if it is just not you, you are going to stay in the Labour party and you are prepared to serve the new leader?

YVETTE COOPER: Look, I’m not leaving the Labour party, definitely not, I have been part of the Labour party for over 25 years, this is the party that I believe in, I’m not taking my bat and ball home.  I want us to be a united party, I want us to be a strong party but I want us to be strong enough to take the Tories on and to win and that is why I am standing and asking for people’s votes.  

DM: Okay, let’s turn to this very important issue, a lot of people saying this was the point at which we started paying attention to Yvette Cooper, the points you’ve made about the refugee crisis.  Let’s deal first of all with numbers, you’ve suggested round about 10,000 Syrian refugees should be accepted by the United Kingdom, we are now hearing today the Prime Minister is thinking of that number, perhaps 15,000, is that about right?  Do you welcome what we are hearing from the Prime Minister?  

YVETTE COOPER: I hope that’s right, that would be very welcome if that is what the government is saying.  This is obviously a very big change in the government’s position over the last week because obviously a week ago they were saying they wouldn’t take anybody, any additional refugees so I hope that’s right.  I would like to see that include not just refugees directly from the camps near Syria but also some of those who are fleeing the conflict and have made it into Europe and particularly …

DM: Even at Calais, we’ve seen pictures of Syrians at the camps in Calais.

YVETTE COOPER: That’s right and I think particularly the Save the Children have called for Britain to take 3000 unaccompanied children.  Now they are in the most desperate situation of all, no parents, no adults to look after them and if you remember what we did in Britain as part of the Kinder Transport, we helped then 10,000 unaccompanied children, gave them homes and they built their lives here and contributed to our country.  I think that tradition of compassion and support is something that we should recognise again now.

DM: So some of those camps in and around Calais, is it only Syrians, would you want British officials going round saying who are the Syrians here, we will consider for you to come here?  Because you know the statistics as well as I do, when you look at the number of asylum applications that were accepted within the last year the most number of people who get through are Eritreans followed by Pakistanis.  

YVETTE COOPER: Sure and I think the response to Calais needs to be something I’ve been calling for for a long time which is the French authorities need to do an urgent assessment, an urgent asylum assessment of all those who are in the camps at Calais because you need to know whether people are refugees fleeing conflict and persecution, that might be from Eritrea or it might be, I think some have travelled through Libya as well but also we know the big problem has been the refugee crisis from Syria but look, if people are simply travelling illegally, well then immigration laws need to be enforced and what I’ve said from the start is you’ve got to have a difference between immigration and asylum and the problem we’ve had I think for too long is that the government has kind of merged the two and that’s what causes a lot of the concern.  They are different, it is very different if people are looking for work but they have a safe home to go to and those who are fleeing conflict.  

DM: But ultimately these people come to this country putting extra pressure on public services, whether it is migration or refugees, asylum seeking.  You have encouraged people and have pictured yourself tweeting ‘Refugees welcome’, shouldn’t that have a qualification and say ‘Some refugees welcome’?  Surely the UK can’t accept all that want to come?

YVETTE COOPER: Well the point is that you want all of Europe to be able to share helping refugees.  Look, it would be far better to help people in the region and to come up with a long term solution for Syria, we need a big diplomatic push now to again try and get a solution in Syria and to help those who are in the camps because part of what has driven the new exodus is, I’m told by some of the charities that the rations in some of the camps have been halved because there is not enough support going into the camps. To be fair to the British government they have done a lot more than most other countries to provide support in the region but we need other help from Europe as well and then we need all of Europe to do its bit in terms of helping those who have fled.

DM: And what about these other solutions within the region?  We heard George Osborne, we both of us watched that clip of him on the Andrew Marr Show talking about what was one of the worst decisions, he feels, ever taken back in 2013 not to take military action in Syria and we’re hearing now that perhaps that vote might come up again.  Is that a vote that Yvette Cooper and sections of your party could support?

YVETTE COOPER: Well I’m going to take quite a cautious view on this, I think we need to see what it is that the government is proposing and what the objectives are because it’s really complex in Syria.  You have got a civil war between Assad who the government was proposing that we should take action against last time and ISIL who the government is now talking about potentially taking action against this time but those two forces are in conflict, both of those sides are actually …

DM: But it does seem perverse does it not to pursue ISIL from the air within Iraq, this is British forces, and if they cross the border into Syria leave them alone?

YVETTE COOPER: I think the difference is that in Iraq we are there at the invite of a democratically elected Iraqi government in order to help them, they’ve asked for help to defend their democracy against the barbarism of ISIL.  I think we are right to be supporting the Iraqi government to do so.

DM: So the Americans are wrong because they pursue them into Syria?

YVETTE COOPER: Yes, I think it is just more complicated and I think with Syria what you have to be clear about is what is the objective, what difference is it going to make, is it going to help?  And so far we’ve not seen that set out by the British government.  Of course a responsible opposition should always look at whatever the government puts forward but so far they really haven’t done so and I think the big question for all of us is where is the diplomatic effort coming from to get Syria, to get Russia, to get Iran, to get the Gulf States, to get the US, the EU all pulling together to try to find a long-term sustainable solution.  You need diplomatic initiatives as well as looking at what all of the other wider military options are.

DM: Last personal question I suppose, we have been hearing from a lot of people when it comes to Syrian refugees, Bob Geldof amongst them, the Finnish Prime Minister, saying yes, come and stay in my house. There are one or two properties in the Cooper-Balls family, would you be prepared personally to house some Syrian refugees?

YVETTE COOPER: If that’s what it took and if that is what was what was needed, then of course I think lots of people would be but what I’ve been calling for is for each city and each county to support ten refugee families.  I think we can do that, I think we have got a lot of people across the country coming forward saying now, do you know what, we want to help and I think it has been a huge tribute to people’s compassion across the country that we have seen such a big change.  That is what has changed the government’s mind, that is what has shifted the Prime Minister’s decision on this and I think tribute to people who say we cannot simply turn our backs, we’ve done that for too long.

DM: So your family would consider it, would you encourage other MPs – and there are quite a few of them with some spare capacity in their houses – would you encourage them to do the same?

YVETTE COOPER: You know, I think the starting point is what local councils should be coming forward and saying they can do, that’s where I think we should start because what we want, particularly for example when I was talking about the children, we had the Kinder Transport obviously very many generations ago, families simply came forward and took unaccompanied children directly into their homes.  Now of course you would want there to be proper safeguarding checks and to use the fostering systems that we have and to extend and expand those in order to support children but it is different from obviously the Kinder Transport days and you want that proper support in place so I think what’s important is, look, let’s find a way.  At the moment there is no way for people to come forward and offer to help, the government should make sure there’s a way for people to come forward and to offer to help but also make sure there is proper professional support and expertise for families and refugees to get the help they need.

DM: Yvette Cooper, thank you very much indeed.  The Shadow Home Secretary there.