Kate’s latest column for the Shields Gazette:
Earlier this week in Westminster, shameless Conservative MPs passed a motion of confidence in Boris Johnson’s zombie government – just days after doing everything they could to force him out of office.
Shamelessly, Tory MPs cheered when this doomed Prime Minister said he was proud of what he has done.
The same Tory MPs that brazenly voted to back his Government on Monday certainly didn’t have confidence in him last week when one after another, they resigned.
No one should be proud of his record. He has done nothing for communities across the Jarrow constituency.
Around 38 per cent of children across the Jarrow constituency are trapped in poverty.
So many families are struggling to cope with the ever-rising cost of living and inflation is at a 40-year high.
Equally as damning is the worrying increase in the number of working people who are being forced to turn to a food bank. Locally we are seeing an overall increase of 37 per cent in Food Bank usage over the past 12 months. Hebburn Helps food bank have informed me that over the past year there has been a 29 per cent rise in Food Bank usage from working people alone. These figures highlight the neglect of our community by Boris Johnson and his Government.
Our communities have been neglected over the past 12 years of Tory rule as they have ploughed ahead with their relentless attacks on working people.
Boris Johnson repeatedly churns out the line that he ‘got the big calls right’ yet during his premiership child poverty has increased by over a third in Gateshead and South Tyneside alone.
Parents are skipping meals to feed their children, and families are even selling the family car and cycling to work, just to get through their daily struggles as the cost-of-living crisis hammers people hard.
The Tory leadership candidates will promise the earth but the one thing we do know is that they will do nothing for the North East and communities like ours.
Multiple Government departments have already been thrown into disarray causing chaos for constituents when contacting the Passport Office, Home Office and the DVSA to name but a few, and they are being let down.
The NHS is in crisis, with a severe lack of funding, a crisis that goes back to when the Tories joined forces with the Lib Dems back in 2010.
These are the big calls that Johnson has got wrong time and time again and things won’t change with a new leader.
This week I had no hesitation in voting no confidence in this Government and if the Tory MPs had the same conviction as they had last week, then they would have done the same.
The Tories need to go. Now!
