Andy Street says the region’s new Tory voters need concrete policies to match Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ pledge
Boris Johnson has been urged by one of the most senior Conservative figures outside London to match the symbolism of his “levelling up” pledge with concrete policies.
Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, said the prime minister had shown he was “not for turning” in the face of Tory heartland MPs worried the party would neglect its traditional voters, but pressed him to set out a “full policy platform” in the coming months.
Fresh from securing an increased majority in the May local elections as one of the few Conservative metro mayors, Street cautioned that the swathes of “red wall” voters who backed the party for the first time in 2019 “want to see delivery”.
The former John Lewis managing director also called on ministers not to rely totally on public spending to boost the life chances of those in impoverished areas, instead saying that leveraging significant investment by private businesses was “the only way out of this country’s economic challenge”.
Speaking from Wolverhampton College, Street conceded the idea behind levelling up was “not completely new”, instead pioneered by former prime minister David Cameron – meaning it had already been “in action” for several years.
However, he praised Johnson for vowing to make it “the defining mission of his government” and admitted that while a landmark speech Johnson gave in Coventry last month on his priorities as the UK emerged from the pandemic did not contain everything he wanted to hear, he was confident those announcements would come.
Street said: “He could easily have turned his back on that after Covid. But actually, no, he’s leaning right into it. And he’s also telling his party – and this was what was so important – that that is what the Conservative government’s going to do.
Related: The cost of Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’: £2tn, says UK thinktank