Just because there isn’t a vacancy, doesn’t mean there isn’t a contest. Although, until Theresa May’s shock decision to call a general election, most Labour MPs expected Jeremy Corbyn to lead the party into the next election, his would-be successors have all been quietly profiling for the top job. Think of it as the invisible Labour leadership contest.
The last few months have been exceptionally good for Yvette Cooper, partly because several of her rivals had bad ones. Dan Jarvis wrote a long essay that was largely poorly received in the parliamentary Labour party, and, to compound the error, called up one MP who criticised the piece on Twitter to complain.
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