THE West Midlands mayor Andy Street has called on the Conservative Party to come together and back prime minister Rishi Sunak despite admitting the pair previously “fell out”.
Sunak’s position has been under scrutiny in recent months, with former home secretary Suella Braverman on Monday (22) refusing to rule out backing a leadership challenge if the prime minister’s Rwanda plans fails.
How Tory politicians fare in the local elections on May 2 – when Street is seeking re-election as mayor - is seen as another test for Sunak’s credentials to lead the party into the general elections, expected later this year.
“Yes, Rishi Sunak is the right person to lead the Conservative Party into the next general election,” Street told Eastern Eye.
Asked if he was surprised by Tory unrest towards the prime minister, the mayor added: “I'm very surprised - because it's very straightforward, parties win when they are united.”
Street, who previously said Sunak allows “too much noise from the right wing”, added that the Tories could only win the election by being “moderate and inclusive”.
“If you look at the actual people who are in the most influential positions, the foreign secretary David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, as the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi as prime minister, they personally are very moderate and inclusive people.
“I'm very confident that the message about inclusivity is very much being led by the people at the very top of the organisation.”
Street and Sunak clashed last year when the prime minister decided to cancel the northern leg of HS2 high-speed rail during the Tory party conference last October. Street was also later critical of Sunak’s claim that “mob rule” was descending on to British streets as protests erupted over the conflict in Gaza.
“Our relationship is respectful,” Street told Eastern Eye on Monday (22). “We fell out, that’s true. But there's a really important lesson from that - which is that in mature relationships, you do occasionally have fallings out and good comes from it.
“The good that came from that was that we've been to look at an alternative to HS2 - to better connect Birmingham and Manchester. The prime minister said himself ‘I want to hear proposals from Andy Street for better connectivity and that is now what’s being done.”
Andy Street (right) with Rishi Sunak (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The latest polling shows the Conservatives are on course to suffer a massive loss in the upcoming general election with YouGov data suggesting that only 22 per cent of voters would support the Tories.
Labour, on the other hand, have 46 per cent support in the same poll.
Street has been accused of distancing himself from the Tories with his “brand Andy” campaign material excluding reference to the Conservatives.
“I am a proud Conservative, but that is totally different to ‘do I agree with this Conservative government in everything it’s doing?’” he said.
“You say I've distanced myself from the party. I have done the same thing in the 2017 election and the 2021 election.
"The most obvious thing is all the leaflets are green, the Conservative branding is very small, but that's how it's always been, this is nothing new. What this reflects is the fact that this is not a job to elect a party, it's about electing one person to be mayor of the West Midlands," Street said.
“I know people are finding this hard to understand, they're not quite used to it yet, but that is actually the truth of this job.
“Who do you trust to lead the West Midlands? It is not a popularity poll between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, and that's why right back to 2017, I've always done it in this way - of what I call focusing on the individual and what they promised to do.”
Street previously won in 2017 and saw his majority over Labour increase from one to nine percentage points when he was re-elected in 2021.
This time, however, he is fighting to hold on his position with a recent poll by the consulting firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies putting Labour candidate Richard Parker ahead with 42 per cent of the vote, and Street trailing behind on 28 per cent.
Some see this as a reflection of the overall public discontent towards the Conservative Party over issues such as the cost of living crisis; their controversial immigration policies; and accusations of racism and Islamophobia among its members.
Tory peer Baroness Sayeeda Warsi described her party as " institutionally xenophobic and racist" after party donor Frank Hester allegedly made racist comments about MP Diane Abbott.
“I don't agree that the party is racist at all. That’s a very strong statement,” Street told Eastern Eye.
“What I would say more generally, is let's look at how I, as mayor, have tried to bring all communities across the West Midlands together. Whenever I see intolerance on the behalf of any party or any politician, I call it out immediately.”
Street pointed to his actions of working with community leaders in the aftermath of religiously motivated attacks in the region in 2019.
In March that year, four mosques in Birmingham had their windows smashed overnight in an Islamophobic attack.
A few months later, a suspected hate crime took place outside the Gujarati Hindu Social and Cultural Centre in Walsall, with CCTV showing a man wearing a hooded jacket repeatedly swinging what is believed to be a wooden stick at religious sculptures.
“Whether it was against the Islamic Centre in Witton or the mandir in Walsall, it was actually me trying to bring the communities together," he said.
“Examine my record of community cohesion, the way in which I work with all faiths and expect every faith to treat everybody else with respect. And I'm very happy for that to be examined.”
With large ethic minority groups in the West Midlands, Street acknowledged that the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict could determine how people voted next week.
“I understand some people will choose to vote for the independent candidate (pro-Palestine candidate Akhmed Yakoob) because of their particular views over Gaza, and that's to be respected,” he said.
“But I do not believe that anybody could possibly believe that I was anything other than a very inclusive, tolerant person who respects and champions all communities.”
My manifesto promises are fully funded, says Street
WHEN Andy Street launched his manifesto last week at the new Walsall Energy from Waste Facility and unveiled its key pledges, he announced the “job isn’t done”, writes Sarwar Alam.
Among his key pledges are to improve the regions transport network; build more homes and create more job opportunities.
His offer to the 2.8 million voters of the West Midlands includes increasing social housebuilding to 1,700 a year by 2028 and creating more than 400,000 jobs and training opportunities to help the region’s economic growth overtake London by 2030.
Street took a dig at the Labour-run Birmingham City Council that went bankrupt in February, when speaking about his own achievements as mayor.
“I keep my word is the most important thing that I do,” Street told Eastern Eye.
“If you look back at the last seven years, I've done exactly what I said I would do and that is manage the finances the West Midlands really skilfully.
"We've not charged a penny (increase) in council tax over the last seven years. That's in sharp contrast to what's gone on in London and Manchester.
“I've given a very clear commitment that I have no intention of imposing a mayoral precept and you can look at that as a contrast, again, to what's going on in Birmingham.
“We don't actually need to incur any mayoral taxes. There are lots of other policies, but those are perhaps two of the cross-cutting things about what sort of type of person I am and how I think about this job.”
Street claimed he already has the funding to complete the work pledged in his manifesto.
“One of the distinctions as to how I would do things would be financial competence, as opposed to Birmingham's financial incompetence,” he said.
“The reason I can give a number of these commitments is we have already secured the money so that everything in my manifesto, all 149 pages, is funded.
“On the social housing, to be specific, we have already secured £400 million of the affordable homes programme.
"We got this 12 months ago, when I managed to persuade the government that that should be devolved to us, (it was) never been devolved to the West Midlands before or anywhere else outside London.
“If we look at transport, another area where we've made huge commitments around new metro lines and rail lines, all of that, again, it is all funded already, with a war chest of £6.1 billion built up.
"If we talk about the skills commitment, annual investment of £170 million is there.
“We can see the funding streams that I have used to make commitments which is in sharp contrast to the Labour opponent,” Street said.
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