ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: I am delighted to be joined in the studio now by the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, hello, good to be with you. So what’s your reaction then to the election results? I mean you lost didn’t you but at the same time quite a good result for Labour.

YVETTE COOPER: We saw, it was great to see constituencies turning Labour again, to see more Labour MPs being elected. I think we had a very strong campaign and Jeremy’s work across the country did a lot to inspire young people coming out to vote and that’s really important not just for this election but it feels really important for the health of our democracy to see more people voting and particularly more young people having their say.

SR: At the same time though you lost for the third time, you got fewer seats that you got in previous elections – not necessarily at the last election but it’s not really the incredible result that Jeremy Corbyn has been hailing is it? Is this how far the Labour party has sunk now that losing an election is a victory?

YVETTE COOPER: Well no, we’ve got to further, of course we have. It is great to see us win seats like Canterbury or Kensington and Chelsea which we wouldn’t have imagined winning in this election but of course we have also got to look at what do we need to do to win back Mansfield that we lost, some of the small number of constituencies that we lost and I don't think there will be any sense of complacency anywhere in the party because we are going to need to do more and win more seats but also recognise that actually that increase in turnout, having the young voters come out, was really important, everybody should welcome that at the same time as saying of course we all want to do more.

SR: You were up against probably the worst Conservative campaign that many of us can remember though weren’t you?

YVETTE COOPER: That’s true.

SR: I mean if they get their act together you could be looking at losing a lot more seats.

YVETTE COOPER: Look, Theresa May’s campaign unravelled very substantially and she had a poor manifesto, our manifesto I think got strong support, hers provoked actually a lot of hostility as well. Look there are three challenges for Labour right now: the first is that we have got to keep challenging Theresa May and this deeply dodgy DUP deal because I think it goes against what the election result was. Theresa May held a referendum on herself and lost it so the idea that she can just carry on as if the election didn’t happen simply through this dodgy deal I think is not on. Secondly I think we have to find a way to get some cross-party consensus around a stable Brexit process, negotiation process, otherwise that’s going to get caught up in chaos and that won’t be in the national interest and then thirdly, I think we are going to have to prepare for another general election because whilst I don't think it’s what a lot of people want and there will certainly be a lot of very tired candidates and party members of all kinds rolling their eyes at the thought, I just don’t see that what Theresa May’s doing is sustainable so therefore we have to be ready for whatever comes at us.

SR: And should Jeremy Corbyn lead the Labour party into that next election?

YVETTE COOPER: Of course.

SR: So you got it wrong then didn’t you?

YVETTE COOPER: Well I think since the leadership election last summer I think actually the whole party has been pulling behind Jeremy and Tom and the shadow cabinet and so on so yes, it’s right we had leadership elections last summer and the summer before and we had a debate as part of that but since then everybody has been pulling together and I think that’s why we actually had that strong result as a result of not just the work that Jeremy and the campaign team were doing nationally but also the hard work of a lot of local candidates, a lot of local party members, some very targeted campaigns in different areas as well. So it was the fact that it was the whole party that’s delivered the progress that we’ve made but you’re right, we’ve still got to go further.

SR: Let’s have a look at what you did say last summer about Jeremy Corbyn. ‘He is losing us Labour support across the country, particularly in the towns and coalfields that built the Labour movement’. Do you accept that you were wrong?

YVETTE COOPER: Well that’s what I was worried about at the time of the referendum, I think we all were.

SR: You said he was losing you Labour support.

YVETTE COOPER: Exactly, because that’s what we were all worried about at the time of the referendum and you can see the contrast between the campaign that we had during the referendum and the campaign that we’ve had since then…

SR: So you were wrong?

YVETTE COOPER: … and I think the campaign now is very different and actually as a result of everybody supporting it. Last summer after the referendum I think we were all deeply troubled about what was happening, not just in coalfields but in towns across the country. What I think we do have now though is there is a bit of a difference though between areas, particularly London and the cities where we have really strong support and a big increase in majorities, a big turnout and so on and of course places like Mansfield which is a coalfield area in the East Midlands where actually we lost the constituency there. So it is incumbent on all of us right through in terms of the leadership, the Shadow Cabinet and the whole party to look at what do we do now to build on those gains in those constituencies as well as look at the areas where we lost and we need to pull that back.

SR: I am still a bit confused about whether you think you were wrong about Jeremy Corbyn or not?

YVETTE COOPER: I think that things have changed since then and what we accepted was that we had a leadership election after the summer, at the end of that leadership election we all said okay, it’s done, we’ve had that debate, Jeremy won that second leadership election and he has just shown why he won that second leadership election because he has managed to inspire the Labour party during last summer and also managed to inspire a lot of people to go out and vote Labour during this election as well. But I do think circumstances have also changed, the referendum last year I think was really troubling for a lot of us, we’ve changed a lot, the party has changed a lot and the party has moved on a lot since then and that’s why we had such a strong campaign right now.

SR: You talked about the party pulling together so if you were offered a job now in the Shadow Cabinet, would you take it?

YVETTE COOPER: I’m not going to be presumptuous about what Jeremy wants to do, it is his decision about what he wants to do in terms of the Shadow Cabinet, he has got to choose the Shadow Cabinet he wants. That’s what I think he did last autumn, what he asked me to do was do the refugee taskforce which I did and where we got the Dubbs amendments through as a result, which was really important and has helped a lot of child refugees.

SR: So I know it’s a hypothetical question and all politicians hate those but if he did pick up the phone and said Yvette, I want to have you back on my top table, what would you say?

YVETTE COOPER: Again, look, I don't think I should be presumptuous and I don't think we should get into a kind of … I don't think anybody should be bartering or bidding for different kinds of jobs in TV studios and I don't think Jeremy will be setting out his Shadow Cabinet in TV studios either. He has not asked me before to be in his Shadow Cabinet, I’ve been doing the Home Affairs Select Committee, he’s got to decide what he wants to do and then other people can respond to that. I think the bigger point is the principle that we all need to be pulling together to take on Theresa May and to take on the Tories and what they are doing. This DUP deal that they have done is really dodgy, it’s unsustainable and it’s not just bad in terms of the politics of the House of Commons, it’s also really irresponsible for the Northern Ireland peace process and the idea that the British government could be taking sides having been the guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent peace agreements I think is really troubling. There has been a lot of criticism both for Theresa May and for David Cameron for putting their party interests above the national interest, both in terms of the referendum without a plan then in terms of this general election without a plan. I actually think that they are doing it a third time now, they are putting party interest in terms of cobbling together their government ahead of the national interest and the Northern Ireland peace process and it’s really, really worrying.

SR: But a genuine question, what could the Conservatives do now? What choice does Theresa May have because she doesn’t have the numbers to have a majority government, what is she supposed to do?

YVETTE COOPER: I don't think her position is tenable at all. I think she made this election all about herself and has had such a strong reaction against her and against the decisions that she put forward that I don't think her position is tenable. I also don’t think that she has got the skills to cope with a hung parliament where you have to work in a different way, you have to be more collegiate, you have to be more open and transparent, you have to work with other parties and I can’t see her having the skills to do that at all. I assume that they will have a leadership contest within the Conservative party and …

SR: And you think that’s the right thing to do, do you?

YVETTE COOPER: It’s not for me to judge what’s the right thing to do for them but I think that’s where they will end up because I don’t see that Theresa May’s position is remotely tenable and I also just don’t think she is going to be capable of doing the very difficult cross-party work that is needed in a hung parliament.

SR: So she got more seats and more votes than Jeremy Corbyn and you are saying her position is untenable so why is Jeremy Corbyn’s tenable then because he did worse?

YVETTE COOPER: I think what you saw with us was an increased number of seats and an increase in Labour support …

SR: But still not enough though.

YVETTE COOPER: And we’ve got to do more, we’ve got to do a lot more. I suppose you could see it as Theresa May has ended up creating both a coalition of chaos and stable and strong leadership only from the opposite parties of the ones she intended to. I think the big challenge for us is actually now about the Brexit negotiations. There is not a lot we can do about the chaos in the Conservative party at the moment but Article 50 has been triggered and there needs to be some sort of Brexit negotiation process take place. I’ve always said that I thought that should be done as a cross-party process, I think now there should be a sort of cross-party commission or group set up to try and take forward those negotiations in a way that is open, is thoughtful, that is consensual and that accepts that not everybody is going to get the deal they want. There is going to have to be compromises on all sides but if you try and do it in that way we might actually be able to pursue the national interest rather than it just getting stuck in this Tory small cabal which is what Theresa wants and is simply not going to work.

SR: You talk about the Brexit negotiations that are looming, very difficult talks, very big responsibility for a divided parliament. This is the time when surely Jeremy Corbyn needs his top team around him. There have been reports saying that he’d be prepared to let some of those big beasts from the back benches back into the Shadow Cabinet if they wholeheartedly back the manifesto, is that something you’d be prepared to do? Do you fully stand behind that manifesto?

YVETTE COOPER: We have had a good manifesto that has got a lot of support all across the country, not just things like support for the NHS but things like the lifelong learning that nobody really noticed because it got so ended up getting caught up in different issues and debates. Actually there are some really important policies within that manifesto that we have to keep campaigning for.

SR: So you support all of it do you?

YVETTE COOPER: I think your point was still trying to suck me back in to advising Jeremy Corbyn on the Shadow Cabinet that he should do and that is not for me to do. He has got to make his decisions as he has done every single time before. What we’ve got to do as the Labour party is to concentrate I thin on those three things: challenging Theresa May and on the DUP deal; trying to get cross-party stable process around the Brexit negotiations and then preparing for what could end up being another general election at any time where actually we are going to need to be as forceful and as determined in taking the Tories on and stopping them doing the things they wanted to do – the school cuts that they wanted to do that hit our kids future, the hit to the NHS, the hit to families across the country who actually need a Labour government standing up for them and that is what we have to keep working for.

SR: It seems at the moment the Labour party is really shaped in Jeremy Corbyn’s image, I mean that manifesto had his fingerprints all over it. Have the Labour moderates, the critics of Jeremy Corbyn, effectively lost the argument now?

YVETTE COOPER: I think there was more consensus behind that manifesto. What you are talking about is investing in public services and it also includes, I mean Jeremy Corbyn has now accepted the rest of the Labour party’s position on Trident so actually I think there was a lot of …

SR: He said that there would be a review and he wouldn’t commit to it.

YVETTE COOPER: But the manifesto has been clear, party policy has been very clear, we continue being a multilateralist party and not a unilateralist party. Look, there are going to carry on being differences of view on different policies but that’s okay, we can still be a broad based party and I think that actually what we ran during this election campaign was a very broad based campaign and that is how we did get support from different parts of the country, how we managed to win back support from UKIP voters and also win back support from Liberal Democrat voters and get new voters coming to us. We had some areas where we had Tory voters who were upset about the dementia tax so I think it was broad based, you’re right that it didn’t go far enough in terms of winning a Labour majority and that is our challenge now and so we do need to look at what more do we need to do if we are to win back Mansfield, if we are to win back the extra votes that we need, what do we need to do to build on this and not simply rest on our laurels and think this is far enough, it’s to go further.

SR: Okay, Yvette Cooper, thank you very much for coming in to see us today.