Yvette Cooper says Labour ‘did not do government very well’ under Starmer

Yvette Cooper summarised Keir Starmer’s leadership as ‘bring me solutions, not problems’. Photograph: WPA/ View image in fullscreen Yvette Cooper summarised Keir Starmer’s leadership as ‘bring me solutions, not problems’. Photograph: WPA/ Yvette Cooper says Labour ‘did not do government very well’ under Starmer Health secretary praises more collegiate style under Andy Burnham and says previous No 10 sidelined her from key policy launch Yvette Cooper admits Labour has “not done government very well” in the last couple of years, and accused Keir Starmer’s No 10 of sidelining her during the launch of a key immigration policy when she was home secretary. Speaking on the Political Currency podcast with the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne, Cooper highlighted some of the difficulties ministers faced with Starmer’s leadership, which she summarised as “bring me solutions, not problems”. She said she had found a more collegiate style under Andy Burnham, and argued in favour of trying to form a national consensus around social care and reintroducing Sure Start-style children’s centres for young families under his leadership. Contrasting the new prime minister with Starmer, the health secretary said there had been “a style of leading the government that maybe doesn’t necessarily work in politics” under the last administration. As an example, she was critical of how she was in effect excluded from launching the immigration white paper in May 2025 while home secretary. At the launch, which was fronted by Starmer, he spoke of introducing policies to deal with the risk that Britain could become an “island of strangers”, which Cooper later had to defend. She told Osborne: “Keir wanted the immigration white paper. And I’m not sure you can do that in politics … the thing you see with Andy is ‘hang on, bring me the problems. I want to talk to you about the problems. She said she also wanted to build national agreement around the principles of Sure Start, a programme to help young families that was cut when Osborne was chancellor. Telling Osborne she was “still angry” about his decision to cut funding for Sure Start children’s centres, she said: “I actually want to build that same national consensus on how we start our kids’ lives, so that no future government of whatever party would think, you know what, it’s OK to rip up Sure Start, because actually we establish this as something that’s so important in children’s lives.