Don’t think of new PM as city saviour

THERE is a problem with Jack Brereton’s homily (Personally Speaking, October 31), below, on how Rishi Sunak, our fourth Tory Prime Minister in six years, cares for the area: he doesn’t.

The video clip of him addressing Tory faithful in well-heeled Tunbridge Wells is exhibit one in the prosecution case.

Displaying pride in moving funds from deprived areas of the North and Midlands to comfortably off areas in the South is not only a bad look, but rather demolishes the MP for Stoke South’s case.

News this week of the failure of the Government to support a battery factory in the North East and the closure of the airport near Doncaster further drives a spike through the leaky hull of his argument. And we do not have to travel too far to see further evidence of the widening gulf between Tory rhetoric and the grim reality of life in the Potteries.

Forty per cent of children, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, in the area are in poverty.

Local foodbanks claim they find it difficult to cope with massively increased demand. Conditions will undoubtedly worsen as inflation and interest rate rises, the consequence of the catastrophic mini-budget of the short lived Truss leadership on the cost of living.

Nor is Mr Brereton’s assertion about Government investment in the Potteries being either ‘staggering’ or the largest in decades.

It is dwarfed by the £1.3 billion of funding provided to the North Staffs Partnership Board in the early 2000s, which led, for instance, to the building of the sixth form college in Stoke.

The £56 million Levelling Up Fund has to be seen against the £125 million estimated loss suffered by the city council as a result of austerity since 2010.

I would also question the fable that the city has been neglected over the years, although the argument that terrible decisions have been made by local authorities is a valid one.

The present Prime Minister should not be seen as a saviour. He and previous Tory prime ministers since 2010 can take a large part of responsibility for the abject state of the city. It should be a matter for shame rather than celebration.

CLLR BILL CAWLEY LEEK WEST WARD