‘LABOUR NEEDS TO SHOW VOTERS WE CAN DELIVER’
MP says party will tackle cost of living crisis
A SENIOR Labour politician says her party needs to convince voters it can be trusted to deliver true ‘levelling up’ – as it continues to struggle at the polls in North Staffordshire.
Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy believes places like Stoke-ontrent need and deserve ‘Crossrail levels of investment’ to make up for 40 years of de-industrialisation which has seen jobs ‘bleed out of the city’.
Ms Nandy visited Stoke-on-trent yesterday to speak to young people at North Staffs YMCA and local union activists.
Her visit came a week after Labour failed to regain control of neighbouring Newcastle Borough Council in the local elections, with the ruling Conservative Group bucking the national trend by actually increasing their majority.
The visit also came just a day after a cabinet ministers’ trip to Middleport Pottery, during which Boris Johnson hailed his party’s plans to boost jobs and growth in the Potteries.
But Ms Nandy said it would take more than ‘a lick of paint on the high street’ to regenerate Stoke-on-trent, and claimed the government was failing to invest in people here.
The Wigan MP admitted her party was facing a challenge to win back voters in ‘red wall’ areas like Stokeon-trent where the Tories saw huge gains in 2019. But she insisted that Labour offered a genuine alternative to Mr Johnson’s government on issues such as the cost-of-living crisis and levelling up.
She said: “I think we have started to get a hearing again with the public. “When people made that break from us three years ago it was painful, and I wondered at the time whether it was permanent. I think people are starting to look at us again.
“But what we’re battling now is a Prime Minister and a government that is trying to convince people that we’re all the same. He’s trying to convince people that there is no alternative.
“That when you’ve got a cost-ofliving crisis with pensioners having to get on buses to stay warm and families who work struggling to afford food or heating, that there is no alternative and nothing can be done.
“There are things that can be done and we’ve got to convince people that not only do we have a plan, but they can trust us to deliver it.”
Ms Nandy said a Labour government’s ‘overriding priority’ would be tackling the cost-of-living crisis, with measures such as a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to help people pay their energy bills, and a restoration of the £20 Universal Credit uplift, which she said had taken £20 million out Stoke-ontrent’s economy.
She also said Labour would invest in young people’s skills and in retrofitting homes, creating jobs and cutting heating bills.
Ms Nandy claimed that the gap in investment between the South East and the rest of the country had actually increased since Mr Johnson became Prime Minister.
She said: “People can see this – you can’t just put a lick of paint on a high street and believe that’s going to rebuild the economy.
“The small grants that we’ve been given by central government pale into insignificance compared to the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been stripped out of Stoke-ontrent by this government over the last 12 years.”