Letwin appeals to inner city voters
Oliver Letwin has set out to make the Conservatives the party of the inner city as part of their new ‘fairness for all’ campaign.
In a speech in Brixton, the Shadow Home Secretary highlighted the importance of reversing the collapse of his party in inner city constituencies, a trend that has left them with almost no representation in inner London, or other inner cities.
Mr Letwin called for optimism about plans for a revival in a sense of community in every neighbourhood, noting that this will be considered naive, but claiming that it was a flaw of other parties that they had given up on such intentions.
Speaking about sustainable social progress for disadvantaged areas, Mr Letwin called Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech the greatest of the 20th century, and suggested that, like equality for minorities in the USA, the improvement of UK inner cities was a dream that could be achieved.
The calls are designed to help foster the perception that the Conservative Party is moving away from policies designed only to enrich the wealthy. They have recently announced a series of policy intentions that they claim will benefit the disadvantaged.
This appeal to the poor is also intended to capitalise on the view that Labour has moved away from their left wing roots and now focus too heavily on pleasing middle class and business interest.
A new report on child poverty will further this view, with the claim that it is now harder for those born in poverty to escape it then when Labour came to power.
The Labour party focused heavily on child poverty when it was first elected, and some figures suggest half a million children have been lifted out of it. However, the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that those who remain in poverty are in deeper poverty than before.
