Tory Candidate Claims Labour Risks "Taking The North For Granted"

The Conservative candidate for Carlisle has said Labour is "taking the North for granted" and called for whoever wins the next General Election to continue the legacy of the Northern Powerhouse project.

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of the Northern Powerhouse project, announced by then-chancellor George Osborne to boost transport connections between cities in northern England and extend devolutionary powers to northern regions.

While the political language around reducing regional inequalities has now been transferred to the 'levelling up' agenda, John Stevenson, who has served as MP for Carlisle since 2010 and chair of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs since 2022, said continuing the legacy of Northern Powerhouse should be a top priority for whoever wins the next general election.

“That's the only way I think they're ever going to close the gap between the North and the South,” he said.

“My party, in many respects, almost ignored the North in the past. But now we have got involved with devolution, the levelling up agenda, etc.”

In 2019, the Tories achieved what Stevenson described as an “electoral breakthrough” across the North of England, winning seats such as Workington, Barrow and Furness, Bishop Auckland and Durham North West. 

However, the second YouGov MRP poll during this year's general election campaign, carried out 11-18 June, predicts that Labour will win these seats back from the Tories – and predicts that Stevenson will lose his seat in Carlisle.

“I'm hoping we'll have a significant number of Conservatives elected in this election, but I think in the future, the Conservatives are now establishing themselves as a party that is interested in the North… and there's no reason why we wouldn't continue