YVETTE Cooper has been accused of “adopting” SNP policies after insisting she wanted to modernise Westminster politics by introducing electronic voting, allowing MPs to clap in the chamber and halting Lords appointments until there is democratic reform.
The Labour leadership contender also suggested relocating a reformed House of Lords to Glasgow; an idea already mooted by Kezia Dugdale, the new Scottish Labour leader.
Her suggestions came as the Shadow Home Secretary received the expected boost of an endorsement by Gordon Brown, whose office confirmed the former Prime Minister had cast his first preference vote for Ms Cooper; his second went to Andy Burnham.
Today, the Yorkshire MP will set out her plans for “a new politics in a modern age”, including a proposal to create a new position of Shadow Cabinet Minister for Young People.
She will insist that the way the UK Parliament does politics has to change so that “people have more power and Parliament no longer appears like a closed-off gentlemen's club”.
The Shadow Home Secretary new proposals include:
*a new campaign for votes at 16;
*introducing electronic voting to end late night voting;
*ending the “artificial way of talking” in the Commons chamber;
*clapping instead of having to say ‘hear hear’;
*halting Lords appointments until there is democratic reform and
*considering moving the House of Lords out of London to, say, Glasgow.
Last month, the SNP’s Mhairi Black, at 20 Westminster’s youngest MP, derided the antiquated procedures in the Commons.
The MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South said: “So you’re not allowed to clap like an ordinary person but you’re allowed to bray like a donkey?”
She also criticised the practice of MPs voting in person rather than electronically, saying: “Are we genuinely saying that the underground can log millions of travellers, day in, day out, without a problem, and 650 of us can’t hit a button? It’s just stupid. A couple of Mondays ago, I didn’t get home until half past midnight because we were voting. How is anybody with a family supposed to work those hours?”
An SNP spokesman said: “It is clear to see with this latest announcement by Yvette Cooper that the SNP's progressive voice in Westminster is being heard loud and clear and our stances are now being adopted by other parties.
"Jeremy Corbyn had already accepted the SNP challenge to a freeze on new members of the House of Lords, now Yvette Cooper has also accepted that challenge alongside a host of other SNP policies from Cabinet tours to votes at 16.
“Whilst the SNP MPs find the ban on clapping to be outdated we are more focused on providing effective opposition to Tory welfare cuts and Osborne’s austerity budget; something Yvette Cooper and the majority of her party failed to oppose," he added.
Meantime, Richard Murphy, dubbed the architect of Corbynomics, suggested what Labour needed was an SNP-style alternative.
Noting the Nationalist landslide at the General Election had all but wiped out Scottish Labour, he said: “People have said: ‘At least here is an alternative which does restore confidence in the political system because it’s saying something else is possible,’ and that’s what I’m trying to deliver.”
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