What voters need is hope of a better future, not a change in colour of party rosette - Andy Brown

Readers will have their own view on how much of what was promised was achieved. Because that is the acid test. It takes a genuinely great politician to actually deliver on significant chunks of the hopes that they generate.

Therein lies the biggest challenge of this General Election. So many professional politicians have voiced so many carefully crafted slogans and then failed to produce the goods that the public have become understandably cynical about offering their trust.

Rishi Sunak is certainly struggling to secure it. It is not easy to persuade the public that you will offer a strong and stable government when your party has delivered quite so much chaos, dishonesty and rule breaking. The public has seen too many irresponsible people with little genuine talent taking up high office and a lot of people have concluded that the consequence is higher mortgage payments and a struggle to pay the bills.

Keir Starmer has proved very good at tapping into a fear that the Conservative Party will continue to be dominated by enthusiasts for daft theories rather than practical policies. He is pushing the very simple message that it is time for a change. After so much instability many will wish to listen.

Yet the worry must be that this is not a positive slogan and a vision for the future. It is a critique of the past. When it comes to articulating hope, Keir has a lot of work to do. It is hard to be inspired by a leader who has backed away so quickly from the ideas he espoused when he was trying to win the party leadership. He seems to want to make caution and small deeds a central plank of his offering.

After years of neglect our battered northern cities and our struggling High Streets need urgent action and a bold vision. It takes determination and a concerted plan to create a better future for cities like Bradford which have some horrible housing stock, empty shops in the main centre, the worst train stations of a city of its size in Europe, empty disused mills and too little vibrant modern industry.

We need to be hearing practical plans for renovating homes, improving schools, connecting well respected University departments with modern business expertise and transforming public transport. If change isn’t delivered quickly enough, then those red wall areas that once trusted Labour and abandoned them at the last election will abandon them quickly again in five years time even if they deliver votes this time round.

Much of the drive from the hopeful incoming government is to build new towns, weaken planning laws that protect suburban areas and allow developers to build where land is cheap. That damages the green belt but does little to prevent life getting harder in our former industrial heartlands.

For many decades now Britain has relied increasingly on financial services income generated primarily in London whilst the contrast between the South East and much of the North has got worse with every passing generation. The hope must be that we can build strong communities in the British regions around reinvigorated British industry. We need a regional transformation programme with modern industries providing good quality jobs in the places where they are most needed to rebuild community spirit. We need serious and sustained investment in expanding green industries, not a weak backdown on ambitions at the first whiff of criticism.

To my mind the most practical way to achieve revival of our neglected communities is for national and local government to identify future employment opportunities where Britain has a comparative advantage and to work closely with farsighted business people to create places of opportunity where we gather together clusters of low carbon knowledge economy businesses.

Success can’t be handed out from London, it has to be built locally and the leadership of the transformation has to come from the communities we want to see enhanced.

Whoever wins this election, there will undoubtedly be scenes of great celebration as the victors and those who voted for them look forward to a new era. Those victory celebrations will ring hollow if they are not accompanied by serious changes in the way this country is governed and a serious rethink of objectives.

I fear for this country if one party of smug politicians squabbling over who controls a huge majority is replaced by another that feels equally secure in its dominance over us. We have to put power and hope back into local communities.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.