Javid believes city seats are within Tories’ reach this time
Chancellor confident of making historic gains
CHANCELLOR Sajid Javid thinks the Conservatives could make historic gains in Birmingham when voters go to the polls on December 12.
Tories have one true-blue stronghold in the city, Sutton Coldfield, but they have failed to win any other seats in Birmingham since 1997.
Mr Javid, the Conservative candidate for Bromsgrove, says that his party could win in Birmingham Northfield and in Birmingham Edgbaston this time.
Speaking to the Birmingham Post, he said: “I think there’s a possibility. We are going out there fighting for every single vote, and of course we’ve got to work hard.
“What we’re hearing on the doorsteps is a number of things but one of them is around Brexit. The West Midlands region voted strongly for Brexit and there’s a feeling like there is in many other parts of the country that they want to see that done.
“And the fact that we have got a deal that we can deliver in weeks if we get a majority resonates with a lot of people.”
We spoke as he was preparing to go campaigning in Northfield, the top Conservative target in Birmingham.
Mr Javid said: “As you know it’s next door to my constituency, so I know the area reasonably well. And talking to our candidate, he feels there is definitely a mood for our message. They like Boris Johnson, they like the things that we have been talking about and doing in the last 100 days or so. And there is a good story to tell about the West Midlands in the last 10 years.”
This includes “300,000 new jobs, 90,000 new businesses, half the unemployment rate”, the Chancellor said.
Official figures do back much of this up. In 2010, there were 1.8m full time workers in the West Midlands and 655,000 part-time workers. Today, those numbers have risen to 2.07m and 685,000 – an increase of 300,000. And the unemployment rate is down from 9% to 4.1%, making it a bit less than half what it was.
Poverty is also down slightly, from 21% of the West Midlands population in relative poverty in 2008/9 – 2010/11 while the most recent figure, which goes up to 2018, is 19%.
But there has also been an increase in food bank usage, in homelessness and in the number of homeless people dying. For example, figures provided by the Trussell Trust show that 69,652 emergency food parcels were issued to people in need across the West Midlands in 2018/19, up from 58,762 the year before.
More than one in three of these food parcels was for a child.
Mr Javid insists that dealing with these problems is one of the reasons he became a politician.
He said: “No one wants to see people using food banks or being in poverty. Of course nobody wants to see that.
“It’s one of the things that motivates you in government, to come into government in the first place, is to help people just like that.
“But one of the things we’ve (Conservatives) always understood, and I think most people do, is that to help as many people as you can, you need a strong economy. There’s no substitute for that.
“So think of the West Midlands – poverty is down, the number of people living in workless households is down, pensioner poverty is down. People working is up. The only way to cut poverty is to have sustainable jobs.
“Birmingham has grown faster than any other region of the UK outside of London. This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when you have a government that is on the side of business, and it is business that creates the jobs that then pulls people out of government and gives them the opportunities.”
Before becoming Chancellor, Mr Javid was Home Secretary. He claims responsibility for the Government’s current policy of recruiting 20,000 extra police officers nationwide, saying it was developed while he was in that role.
West Midlands Police is to get 366 new officers in the first year of a threeyear programme. However, the force’s Labour Police and Crime Commissioner, David Jamieson, says he believes the force still won’t be able to replace the 2,000 officers it has lost since 2010 as a result of funding cuts.
Asked if the police would get back every officer they have lost, Mr Javid said: “What we can be certain of is that all police forces, and obviously West Mids being one of our biggest forces, are going to get hundreds more officers.
“The overall 20,000 number, although it represents a lot of forces, is something I came up with when I was Home Secretary based on the feedback of the police and their representatives. So it’s what the police have asked for and I think they are right to have asked for that.”