Letter to the Times & Star, 7th March 2024
I HAVE no doubt that the pages of this publication will contain a write-up of Ed Miliband's visit - an ode to promises made time and time again, but never kept.
At the first Cumberland Economic Summit he talked about jobs, without mentioning the coal mine that he campaigns against, and that he and council leader Mark Fryer have written about in the online editions of Times & Star.
He talked about the Port of Workington, without mentioing the £17m this Conservative government is ploughing into the port, Oldside, and into projects based around opening up access - plus the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds going into the Cumbrian Coast Railway Line upgrades, partly to serve the port.
He talked about energy efficiency upgrades for homes, while not mentioning that the Labour council sent back to government £11m for such projects last year, £2m this year, and by failing to issue a simple statement of intent to access ECO4 funding are actively standing in the way of the upgrade of thousands of homes across Cumberland - particularly for those with health issues like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The Lib Dems and the Greens stay silent on these issues, as they're happier taking crumbs from the Labour table than holding them to account.
When he was energy secretary, Ed Miliband was the minister who failed to deliver any new nuclear under a Labour government which sold off all of our nuclear assets, and the shadow minister who opposed the government's plans for new nuclear. Every nuclear power station in Great Britain was built under Conservative governments, and it is a Conservative government which has launched GB Nuclear to rebnuild our nuclear asset base.
I keep saying that honesty matters in politics, and so does a track record of delivery. The only track record of decades of Labour governance in West Cumbria is one of managed decline, and a closed steelworks. Compare that to the pledges I made in 2019 and have delivered in just four years. Hundreds of millions of pounds into projects not to make us feel good today, but to deliver long-term lasting change for your family.
