Labour leader and deputy Angela Rayner hail parts of former prime minister’s flagship domestic policy priority and say Sunak ‘killed it at birth’ while chancellor
Good morning. Keir Starmer is launching Labour’s local elections campaign this morning, and to mark the event he has discovered his inner Boris Johnson. He has written a joint article with Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, praising the ambition behind levelling up, Johnson’s flagship domestic policy priority.
This is not new territory for Starmer. Much of his leadership has been about trying to win back the “red wall” voters who deserted Labour for the Tories in 2019 and it’s why he has told them he wants to “make Brexit work”, not rejoin the single market. Like Johnson, Starmer has criticised what is said to be the new Labour economic model, one over-reliant on financial services in the City of London to generate revenue to subsidise the rest of the UK.
Where you are born often dictates where you end up. That people from Blackpool have a life expectancy of ten years fewer than those in Westminster is a travesty. Instead of pitting areas against one another and relying on the square mile of the City of London to keep the UK economy afloat, we’ll tackle Britain’s regional divide and match the ambition people have for their community. It will be at the heart of our mission-led government.
It’s understandable that working people might have become disillusioned or cynical, because one of the biggest tragedies of the past 14 years is the sense that things can’t change. But they can and they will.
Whitehall under the Tories has become too passive and overly centralised. We will turn that on its head, delivering a far more active central government willing to give local leaders the levers needed to turbocharge their areas. We will change the relationship. Partnership in pursuit of common national missions, not buck-passing and division.
Our Take Back Control Act will entrust power to local leaders, who know their area best and have skin in the game. We will widen English devolution so that every community is taking advantage of the opportunities it brings. We will deepen devolution so combined authorities have a path to gaining powers over transport, skills, housing and planning, employment support, energy and can get a long-term integrated funding settlement in return for exemplary frameworks for managing public money. This will enable local leaders to develop powerful local growth plans that attract specialist industries and enhance their local strengths.
