Andy Street is Mayor of the West Midlands, and is a former Managing Director of John Lewis.
In just over a week the people of the West Midlands will go to the polls to choose the person who will lead the region for the next four years as its mayor.
Since I had the privilege of first taking that role in 2017, the West Midlands has been on a tangible course of renewal, with billions brought in in investment, hundreds of thousands of jobs created, a transport network being visibly transformed and a workforce benefitting from a revolution in skills provision.
Next week’s vote will be crucial in deciding if we continue on this course or go backwards. I hope that my track record, achieved by bringing people together in a business-like, non-partisan way, will persuade people to put their cross next to my name on their ballot sheet.
That approach has been key in a region that is so finely politically balanced.
This week I published an exciting 149-page manifesto which is underpinned by traditionally conservative values of financial competence, driving growth, creating opportunity, protecting heritage, and strong support for business.
But, as any of the UK’s metro mayors will tell you, this job is about putting place before party. Next week’s election is about choosing the individual who is best placed to provide the leadership to take the region forward. It is about picking the best man or woman for the job. In this column, I want to tell you about the innovation and ambition in my manifesto, how its vision is bult on my track record – and why I hope that record has earned me the support of local people, often irrespective of their political colours.
My manifesto is the most comprehensive plan ever drawn up for the future of the West Midlands, with a number of key pledges which are fully costed and rooted in the successes we have already achieved. These pledges are ambitious, but deliverable.
For a start, I am pledging to create 425,000 new jobs and training opportunities over the next four years, driven by an ambition for our rate of economic growth here to leapfrog London between now and 2030.
Can we do this? Yes. In the two years after the pandemic alone we generated 100,000 jobs, while we already provide 70,000 training opportunities each year. We have done the homework, and the figures stack up. In terms of growth, before COVID struck this was the consistently the fastest growing region outside the capital. Driven by booming sectors like tech, we can do this again – and more.
On housebuilding, we already have Britain’s best record. Now I am pledging to maintain that performance and use the £400m war chest I agreed with the Government last year to start a social housing revolution to help those on low incomes by tripling the amount it built here. I will also double down on our brownfield-first approach of building on derelict sites.
We are already building a world-class transport network, opening new railway stations and extending our metro tram lines. If re-elected, I’ll transform how people use that network by ‘capping’ fares across all modes of transport, saving millions of passengers money every single week.
I’m also promising to kick off the UK’s most ambitious retrofit and energy efficiency programme for both people’s homes and business premises, generating green jobs in the next frontier of net zero while tackling energy bills.
On top of these, my manifesto includes pledges to rapidly deploy the region’s £1bn war chest to restore pride in our towns and city centres and to continue making our public transport cleaner and greener, delivering more electric buses and trains, building more cycle routes, and expanding the electric vehicle charging network, all to help meet our 2041 Net Zero target.
Crucially, conservative financial competence underpins all of these ambitions. Under my leadership, the West Midlands Combined Authority has always delivered a balanced budget, and I am pledging that, for the eighth year running, I will not introduce a mayoral tax.
This will resonate deeply with voters particularly in Birmingham, where the Labour-run city council’s bankruptcy has led to a 21 per cent rise in council tax over the next two years.
But there is a deeper political point to be made about the importance of using public finances responsibly.
For a start, all of the pledges in my manifesto are fully costed, with funding sources already identified. In contrast, Labour are calling for the buses here to be taken into public ownership, an ideologically-driven move that cost more than £140m in Manchester – where bus fares are now more expensive than in the West Midlands! There is no indication where they would get the money from to do this.
If you want people to vote for you, they have to be able to trust you to balance the books.
That financial competence is just as important when it comes to winning investment. My financially sound, business-like approach – one that places delivery for local citizens above all, putting place before party – has already delivered £10bn of government investment, and record levels of private-sector investment. I’m pledging to build on that strong track record.
Much has been said about this approach – sometimes dubbed ‘brand Andy’ – but it’s nothing new.
When I first agreed to go for this job, holding discussions first with David Cameron, and then with Theresa May, it was on the understanding that I would do it my own way, with a campaigning approach that focussed on the region and the needs of its people, and away from the party politics of Westminster.
In this job, you have to be a mayor for everyone, one who delivers results for every part of the region. If you can do that, it matters little what colour you have on your leaflets. That has been the ‘brand Andy’ approach from day one.
It meant a commitment to bring the region together regardless of political persuasions, and the willingness to sometimes disagree with the Government, as I did on the cancellation of HS2. But it also meant a laser focus on delivery on the ground, bringing the results on which my new manifesto is built.
It is more important than ever that the West Midlands has a leader who is experienced, who will always put the region before party, who is financially competent, who will balance the books, and has ambition for the future. Someone who can be trusted to get it right.
In just over a week’s time, I hope people will see the real progress we’ve made over the last seven years and keep faith in me to be that leader.
The post Andy Street: Forget the chatter about ‘brand Andy’ – as Mayor I have always put region before party appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Andy Street
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