Yvette Cooper
Yvette Cooper is a British politician who has served as Foreign Secretary since September 2025, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2024 to 2025. A member of the Labour Party, Cooper has been Member of Parliament for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, previously Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, since 1997.
First elected to Parliament at the 1997 general election, Cooper was a Parliamentary under-secretary of state in three departments under Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1999 to 2005. She was promoted to Minister of State for Housing and Planning in 2005, and was retained in the role when Gordon Brown was appointed prime minister in 2007. In 2008, she joined Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, before being promoted to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 2009. Following Labour's defeat at the 2010 general election, Cooper served in Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2011. In 2011, her husband Ed Balls was promoted to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cooper replaced Balls as shadow home secretary and served until Labour lost the 2015 general election.
On 13 May 2015, Cooper announced she would run to be Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election following the resignation of Miliband. Cooper came third with 17.0% of the vote in the first round, losing to Jeremy Corbyn. Cooper subsequently resigned as Shadow Home Secretary in September 2015. Cooper was the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee from 2016 to 2021. As a backbencher, Cooper repeatedly sought to extend Article 50 to delay Brexit. She became shadow home secretary again in Starmer's shadow cabinet in November 2021.
Following Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, Cooper returned to government and was appointed home secretary by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in his ministry. She faced her first major domestic event, the riots across the country following the Southport stabbing, three weeks into her tenure. Cooper was later appointed Foreign Secretary during the 2025 cabinet reshuffle, with Shabana Mahmood replacing her as Home Secretary. Cooper is the first woman in British political history to have served in both roles.
Early life and education
Yvette Cooper was born on 20 March 1969 in Inverness, Scotland. Her father is Tony Cooper, former general secretary of the Prospect trade union, a former non-executive director of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and a former chairman of the British Nuclear Industry Forum. He was also a government adviser on the Energy Advisory Panel. Her mother, June, was a maths teacher.She was educated at Eggar's School, a comprehensive school in Holybourne, and Alton College, both in Alton, Hampshire. She read philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated with a first-class honours degree. She won a Kennedy Scholarship in 1991 to study at Harvard University, and completed her postgraduate studies with an MSc in economics at the London School of Economics.
Early career
Cooper began her career as an economic policy researcher for Shadow Chancellor John Smith in 1990 before working in Arkansas for Bill Clinton, nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States, in 1992. Later that year, she became a policy advisor to then Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Harriet Harman.At the age of 24, Cooper developed chronic fatigue syndrome, from which she took a year to recover. In 1994 she moved to become a research associate at the Centre for Economic Performance. In 1995, she became the chief economics correspondent of The Independent, remaining with the newspaper until her election to the House of Commons in 1997.
Parliamentary career
Cooper was selected as the Labour candidate to contest Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 general election. She was elected as MP for Pontefract and Castleford with 75.7% of the vote and a majority of 25,725. Cooper made her maiden speech in the Commons on 2 July 1997, speaking about her constituency's struggle with unemployment. She served for two years on the Education and Employment Select Committee.Blair and Brown government: 1999–2010
In 1999, she was promoted as Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health. As a health minister, Cooper helped implement the Sure Start programme. In this post, she was also the first British government minister in history to take maternity leave.At the 2001 general election, Cooper was re-elected as MP for Pontefract and Castleford with a decreased vote share of 69.7% and a decreased majority of 16,378.
In 2003, she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regeneration in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with the responsibility of coalfield regeneration. Following the 2005 general election she was promoted to Minister, as Minister of State for Housing and Planning based in the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2006.
Cooper was again re-elected at the 2005 general election with a decreased vote share of 63.7% and a decreased majority of 15,246.
After Gordon Brown became prime minister, Cooper was invited to attend cabinet meetings as Housing Minister. Shortly after taking the job, she was required to introduce the Home Information Pack scheme. According to Conservative columnist Matthew Parris, Cooper conceived HIPs, but avoided direct criticism for its problems because of her connection with Brown. In July 2007, Cooper announced in the House of Commons that "unless we act now, by 2026 first-time buyers will find average house prices are ten times their salary. That could lead to real social inequality and injustice. Every part of the country needs more affordable homes – in the North and the South, in urban and rural communities".
In 2008, Cooper became the first woman to serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury where she was involved with taking Northern Rock into public ownership. As her husband, Ed Balls, was already a cabinet minister, her promotion meant that the two became the first married couple ever to sit in the cabinet together.
In 2009, Cooper was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and took over leading on the Welfare Reform Act 2009 which included measures to extend the use of benefit sanctions to force unemployed people to seek work. Many campaigners – including the Child Poverty Action Group – urged Cooper to rethink Labour's approach, arguing instead that increasing support for job seekers was vital to eradicating child poverty.
Allegations over expenses
In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Cooper had changed the designation of her second home twice in two years. Following a referral to the parliamentary standards watchdog, Cooper and her husband Ed Balls were exonerated by John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner. He said they had paid capital gains tax on their homes and were not motivated by profit. Cooper and Balls bought a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington, North London, and registered this as their second home ; this qualified them for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance, of which they claimed £24,400. An investigation in MPs' expenses by Sir Thomas Legg found that Cooper and her husband had both received overpayments of £1,363 in relation to their mortgage. He ordered them to repay the money.Miliband Shadow Cabinet: 2010–2015
Prior to the 2010 general election, Cooper's constituency of Pontefract and Castleford was abolished, and replaced with Normanton, Pontefract, and Castleford. At the election, Cooper was elected as MP for Normanton, Pontefract, and Castleford with 48.1% of the vote and a majority of 10,979. Following Labour's defeat at the general election, Cooper and her husband Ed Balls were both mentioned in the press as a potential leadership candidates when Gordon Brown resigned as Leader of the Labour Party.Before Balls announced his candidacy, he offered to stand aside if Cooper wanted to stand, but Cooper declined for the sake of their children, stating that it would not be the right time for her. She later topped the 2010 ballot for places in the Shadow cabinet, and there was speculation that the newly elected Labour Leader Ed Miliband would appoint her Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. She instead became Shadow Foreign Secretary.
When Alan Johnson resigned as Shadow Chancellor on 20 January 2011, Cooper was appointed Shadow Home Secretary. Her husband, Ed Balls, replaced Johnson as Shadow Chancellor. Cooper also served as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities from October 2010 to October 2013.
Shadow home secretary: 2011–2015
On 20 January 2011, Cooper took the position of shadow home secretary amidst a shadow cabinet reshuffle. In this position, Cooper shadowed Theresa May at the Home Office. She labelled the government's vans displaying posters urging illegal immigrants to go home a "divisive gimmick" in October 2013.In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, although not in the top 20.
In 2013, she proposed the appointment of a national commissioner for domestic and sexual violence. She spoke at the Labour Party Conference in 2014 about eastern Europeans who were mistreated by employers of migrant labour.
Cooper was strongly critical of cuts to child tax credit announced by George Osborne in the July 2015 Budget; she authored the following statement in the New Statesman:
2015 Labour leadership election
At the 2015 general election, Cooper was re-elected as MP for Normanton, Pontefract, and Castleford with an increased vote share of 54.9% and an increased majority of 6.7%. Following the election and Ed Miliband's resignation, she was nominated as one of four candidates for the Labour leadership. Cooper was nominated by 59 MPs, 12 MEPs, 109 CLPs, two affiliated trade unions and one socialist society. The Guardian newspaper endorsed Cooper as the "best placed" to offer a strong vision and unite the party while the New StatesmanDuring the campaign, Cooper supported reintroducing the 50p income tax rate and creating more high-skilled manufacturing jobs. She proposed the introduction of a living wage for social care workers and the construction of 300,000 houses every year. Cooper disagreed that Labour had spent too much whilst in government.