‘Levelling up’ is another Boris Johnson empty slogan – Yorkshire Post Letters

I MUST have missed something in your front-page lead headed “Levelling up chance ‘must be seized on’” (The Yorkshire Post, September 3), despite reading it several times.

Was there more here than a puff piece for a Tory lobbyist touting for work in the North of England?

If so then, yes, it went completely over my head.

Despite the article’s prominence, you didn’t do the Conservative Party any favours here.

What I think I was reading about was a desperate Downing Street despatching “elections guru” Sir Lynton Crosby to the North in an effort to get other people to stump up ideas to justify its “levelling up” slogan – given the sparsity of the party’s own ideas.

And if they can’t come up with any then Boris Johnson will be able to blame them later for “levelling up’s” failures.

There’s always got to be someone else to blame, of course.

If the party does have ideas of its own, then Sir Lynton was keeping them to himself.

It just underscores that, beyond a convenient slogan, “levelling up” is as meaningless and empty as “Brexit means Brexit”, “Build Back Better”, “Oven-Ready Deal”, “Take Back Control”, etc.

And a policy-deficient Government and Prime Minister fishing around for ideas barely 
20 months after a General Election must have run out of steam.

Makes you wonder if any of these “Red Wall” MPs now sitting on the Government benches are any good.

One idea might be for them to tell the Government to simply fulfil its pledge to replace regional development money disappearing as a result of our departure from the European Union.

Boris Johnson is reportedly £1 billion short this year, with Yorkshire’s share of the loss estimated at £143 million.

There’s talk Boris Johnson might call an early election – a good idea if it results in a 
much-needed change of government.

From: David Hagerty, Huddersfield.

NORTHERN politicians, business interests and communities have been making the case for levelling up, only to be ignored lied to and patronised by the London-based political establishment. Maybe Lynton Crosby, who is part of that London-based political establishment, just hasn’t been paying attention.

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