Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper: ‘Making decisions based on what the US do or say doesn’t feel like sensible foreign policy’

Yvette Cooper, photographed at the Foreign Office in February. Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

Before Yvette Cooper joins me in a plush side room at the Foreign Office, an aide comes in and draws the heavy curtains. Outside is Horse Guards Parade. I can see a strip of Downing Street, a patch of the No 10 garden, daffodils in bloom. I say that it’s a shame to block the light on such a beautiful spring afternoon. The aide coughs, embarrassed, and explains that it’s actually for security.

So that people can’t see in?