[1] Andrew Cooper was born in Twickenham, and educated at Reigate Grammar School, Reigate, Surrey (where his classmates included Keir Starmer and the future American-based conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan),[2] and at the London School of Economics, where he graduated with a BSc (Econ) in 1985.
[3] In the run-up to the 1992 election he was among the group of young former SDP members, led by his close university friend Daniel Finkelstein, who publicly backed John Major and the Conservative Party.
Described by Financial Times political commentator Janan Ganesh as "the first moderniser", Lord Cooper has been a continuous voice for modernisation, writing numerous papers, articles, presentations and book chapters (including 'A party in a foreign land' in Blue Tomorrow, edited by Nick Boles, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, in 2001).
The commentator Matthew d'Ancona in The Daily Telegraph (19 February 2011) wrote that Cooper's "great gift to the Conservative Party has not been liberal ideology, but a pitiless empiricism".
[citation needed] Cooper was portrayed by actor Gavin Spokes in the 2019 HBO and Channel 4-produced drama entitled Brexit: The Uncivil War.