'Next Tory leader will be no different' - Imran Hussain MP

The Tories might be changing leader, but they won’t change anything for the people of Bradford. 

Despite it just being three years since Tory MPs and members selected their last one, the country is set to have its fourth Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister in six years come September, which is an act of instability and chaos that has become a feature of this Government’s rule. 

Whilst like most I am glad to see the end of Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street after three years of immense damage to our country, the next Tory leader will however be no different.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Every single candidate up for selection offers just more of the same policies that have made the lives of people in Bradford worse, and not one has the answers to the problems this Government has created. 

The recent data for child poverty in Bradford East makes this clearer than ever, having increased every year from 2014 to reach a devastating high of 50 per cent today, with well over 15,000 children now growing up in poverty because of the very policies enacted by this Government over the last 12 years. 

Even when poverty was dropping across the whole country because of the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, poverty actually still rose in Bradford East because so many relied on legacy welfare support that the Government callously excluded from the uplift provided to Universal Credit recipients. 

These numbers are sickening and show that the issues that Bradford and our country face go far beyond one man, having risen year on year since the first of our Conservative Prime Ministers in 2010.

But it was the decision made by the ex-Chancellor, now the Tory leadership frontrunner, to refuse to increase legacy welfare support in 2020 that caused child poverty to continue to rise in Bradford. 

Every single candidate for the leadership also then voted to cut the uplift to Universal Credit later on anyway, costing families in Bradford up to £1,000 a year and dragging many into poverty right at the beginning of this rising cost-of-living crisis that has seen soaring energy bills, spiralling fuel prices and rocketing food costs.  

This neglect for places like Bradford is also reflected in the failing levelling up agenda and appalling record on public transport, with the Government cancelling in one swift stroke the Bradford stop on the previously promised high-speed, high-capacity Northern Powerhouse Rail line, and in the process crushing any chance of attracting new investment and new jobs to Bradford in a project that would have brought £22 billion to our local economies. 

Whilst promising the people of Bradford the world, the Government scrapped the hope for a better connected and more prosperous city, and not a single Tory MP standing to succeed the Prime Minister managed to even utter a whisper of objection to the decision to do so. 

All this proves is that to deal with the epidemic of poverty and end the blight of regional inequality, we can’t pin our hopes on another Tory Prime Minister finally doing the right thing, particularly as all the current candidates have proven they can’t.

We also shouldn’t see these policies as some kind of accident or error, but as policies rooted in the DNA of a Conservative Party that serves to protect vested interests against ordinary people. 

Behind all the bluff and insults these Conservative candidates throw at each other, the fact remains that they promise continuity of the last 12 years rather than change for the people of Bradford, and that they offer to always put everyone else before any family in Bradford. 

Instead of just changing the top of the Conservative Party, we need a real change that can deliver what ordinary people in Bradford deserve, and we need to kick the whole Conservative Party out of Government with a General Election to do so.

If we don’t and don’t replace them with a Government that is willing to take the steps needed to reverse the sickening rise of poverty on our streets and give Bradford the investment it is owed, then just like the next Tory Prime Minister, the next 12 years will be no different to the last.