West Midlands mayor had been expected to hold on but was defeated by Labour by 1,508 votes to cap awful results for Tories
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Andy Street, the former West Midlands mayor, and Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, don’t agree on much, but they are both advising against trying to replace Rishi Sunak before the election.
In his Sky News interview after his defeat last night, asked what his message would be to Tory MPs tempted to trigger a vote of no confidence in Sunak, Street replied:
I would not advise that … It’s all about delivery. We don’t need another period where we are debating leadership. [That] could not be clearer in my mind.
Let me cut to the chase so no one wastes time overanalysing this: we must not change our leader. Changing leader now won’t work: the time to do so came and went. The hole to dig us out is the PM’s, and it’s time for him to start shovelling.
The thing everyone should take from Birmingham and the West Midlands tonight is this brand of moderative, inclusive, tolerant conservatism, that gets on and delivered, has come within an ace of beating the Labour party in what they considered to be their backyard – that’s the message from here tonight.
I would definitely not advise that drift.
The psychology here is really very straightforward isn’t it: this is the youngest, most diverse, one of the most urban places in Britain and we’ve done, many would say, extremely well over a consistent period.
The public are not rushing to vote for Sir Keir, though they feel sorely let down by us. They want a reason to vote Conservative, but we are failing to provide them with one. We need to be frank about this if we are to have any chance of fixing the problem.
On tax, migration, the small boats and law and order, we need to demonstrate strong leadership, not managerialism. Make a big and bold offer on tax cuts, rather than tweaking as we saw in the Budget. Place a cap on legal migration once and for all. Leave the ECHR to stop the boats. Tangible improvement to our NHS and tougher sentences for criminals. Start holding failing police chiefs to account so that antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and knife crime are actually sorted out. Take back control of our streets from the extremists. And instead of paying lip service in guidance on transgender ideology in schools, let’s actually change the law to ban the abuse of our children.
