Johanna Maitland

Chair Macclesfield Liberal Democrats

THE news has been dominated for weeks by the Tory Party leadership contest.

A contest that less than 1 per cent of the population can affect the result.

Whilst that number is terribly unrepresentative how about a further dig into the demographics of those people choosing our next Prime Minister?

63 per cent male, 40 per cent over 65 (and likely retired), 80 per cent from ABC1 social

grades (the 3 higher social groups who tend to have better education and higher paid jobs), 56 per cent from the south of England and 76 per cent voted leave in the EU referendum.

Doesn’t sound fair or representative to me and explains why the campaigns have been based on reducing taxes (no tax, no public services by the way) and weird off the wall things like motorway speed limits.

We are facing an

unprecedented cost of living crisis that will see sectors of our population fall into poverty and forced to make decisions on whether to eat or heat their home. Wages are falling in real terms and inflation is soaring.

Decades of underinvestment in training and education, plus the added challenges of Brexit, means that the country has a skills crisis and jobs are remaining unfilled.

Our own Cheshire East Council has over 200 unfilled positions, that’s 7.5 per cent of the workforce.

I have no confidence that after years of Tory infighting they have anything in the kit bag to solve the problems and hearing patronising advice on how we should be putting another jumper on or buying a new kettle shows how totally out of touch they are.

Is there anything we can do though?

Politicians are all the same, I’m told.

But this isn’t true, this is what the papers who put the Liz Trusses in their seats are telling you.

Making sure we keep voting for more of the same.