Sunak revives Johnson’s levelling up pledge to woo ‘Red Wall’ and win election
ACCRINGTON – Rishi Sunak will bring back Boris Johnson‘s “levelling up” promise to win over voters in the North and the Midlands as he prepares a general election on the theme of “sticking with the plan”.
The Prime Minister has sought to discredit Keir Starmer by arguing that he would take Britain “back to square one” at a time when the cost of living crisis is easing.
And he has now kicked off a string of campaign-style events designed to show that he is talking directly to voters about their priorities. He will visit a number of towns in the coming months to make the argument that the Government is investing in them directly after decades of channelling economic development primarily through big cities, i understands.
Speaking in Accrington, Lancashire – one of the key “Red Wall” areas won by the Conservatives in 2019 after years of Labour control – Mr Sunak insisted he had not given up on the idea of “levelling up”, which was central to Mr Johnson’s campaign at the last general election.
He admitted that the rise of online retail had dealt a blow to bricks-and-mortar shops – but insisted that an overhaul of planning laws making it easier to convert empty shops to cafes and homes would help regenerate high streets.
Mr Sunak said: “We all love our high streets and our town centres. And if we’re being honest with each other, I know a lot of us look around at some of them and say, gosh, you know, they’re not heading in the right direction.
“Now that’s nobody’s fault, right? If I ask you, put your hands up who’s bought something online in the past few months, pretty much everyone would, and that makes life more challenging.”
He added: “When I talk to retailers and people involved on high streets they say look, you’ve got to make it easier for us to adapt and change.
“You know, this used to be a shop and now it needs to be a restaurant, or it used to be a restaurant and now it needs to do something else, or we want to put some flats in above the shops on the high street in the way there used to be years ago, we’re going to have people living in those areas.”
The comments form part of a deliberate strategy to reassure voters that the policy of intervening directly in less prosperous areas to reduce regional inequality is still being pursued, i understands.
A source said that the Prime Minister was “passionate” about supporting towns, adding: “For a long time, a lot of investment went to cities and towns were slightly neglected places.”
Mr Sunak also suggested that support for lower-league football clubs would be part of the levelling up strategy during the event at the stadium of League Two team Accrington Stanley.
He promised that a new regulator would “ensure that we have a fair distribution of resources across the football pyramid” if different leagues cannot agree about how the largest clubs should share their revenue with smaller ones.
Summing up his general election message, the Prime Minister said: “The choice now is to stick with the plan because it is starting to deliver the long-term change that our country needs. We do not want to go back to square one.”
In response to the speech, the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “Rishi Sunak is like an arsonist offering to put out a fire. This mess is the fault of Conservative prime ministers crashing the economy, hiking taxes and letting the NHS crumble. He is living on another planet.”
