The Black Country institute of Technology in Dudley was home to a Labour party campaign launch. Mark Andrews of the Express and Star was first to open the questions, and Keir took time to pay tribute to our dear Political reporter: Pete Madeley who has passed away.
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00:00 We're going to start with Mark from the Express and Start.
00:04 We have Mark.
00:05 Mark, can I just say before you start, our condolences.
00:10 Pete Maverly, one of your journalists, passed away.
00:14 He lost a muscle.
00:15 He was very ill.
00:16 Please pass our condolences to his family and to all of your staff.
00:21 This must be a very, very difficult time for everybody at the Express and Start.
00:25 Good.
00:26 Thank you very much, that's very kind of you.
00:29 35 years ago, this was a bustling, thriving town,
00:34 leaving department stores, you could buy anything.
00:39 Since then, under both Labour and Conservative governments,
00:42 it's been a best-managed decline.
00:45 It has suffered more than most towns have in this country.
00:49 At the moment, the government has proposed levelling up plans
00:52 for an Eton College building and for the University.
00:56 The Eton College has a sixth form to give children from deployed backgrounds
00:59 a chance to get an Eton education and demolish the Hippodrome Theatre
01:04 to build a university campus.
01:08 My questions are, can Dudley become the thriving town it was in the 1970s, 1980s?
01:16 What are your thoughts on these regeneration proposals
01:19 that the present government is putting forward?
01:22 Are they enough and what would Labour do differently?
01:25 The answer to the question is yes, it can become a thriving town and place again.
01:30 And I'm determined that it will.
01:32 The phrase you used then, 'managed decline', is a phrase that should eat away at all of us.
01:37 Because that is the feeling in too many places across the country.
01:41 But for that to happen, we need a viable plan and we need to do the hard jobs.
01:46 As Angela said, one mission of an incoming Labour government will be to grow the economy.
01:51 But not just to grow the economy, which is vital, but to grow it in every place across the country.
01:57 Not to have it grown in some parts of the country, but redistribution to be the one word answer for other places.
02:02 So we will work to rebuild Dudley and all the other places and cities across the country
02:08 with the hard jobs and the viable plan that we put forward this morning.
02:11 Thank you Mark very much.
02:13 I've got Lewis from ITV Central.
02:17 So first of all, some voters across towns like Dudley, right across from Midlands,
02:22 are still really unsure about whether Labour really does have their best interests at heart.
02:28 It's still a bit of convincing to do that I think.
02:30 What can you say today that will convince people that you do have their best interests at heart?
02:37 Given the fact that we are here in Dudley today, I wonder too, what does the black country mean to you?
02:43 Well look, I think this is such a good question because one of the most important things in politics
02:49 is being clear that you get it, you understand how people feel about themselves, their family, their community, their place.
02:58 Across the black country it is important that we feel it, we understand it.
03:02 That emotion that comes with place.
03:05 We talk about managing to climb, but alongside that is a huge pride.
03:09 Everywhere I go in the black country, there's an amazing feeling people have in their place, their history.
03:14 It means something to them.
03:16 In many ways I feel they're screaming out for a government that simply matches their ambition and comes up alongside it.
03:23 So in terms of the emotional connection, I completely understand.
03:26 The answer then is, well, if you do understand how we feel, what we want, the ambition that we have,
03:33 and you're prepared to come up alongside us, you've got a far better plan to do it.
03:37 And that's why the Local Growth Plan is so important.
03:40 Because that is local. It's based in place.
03:43 It's about people with skill in the game, playing their full part, but alongside a national strategy that works.
03:50 That is part of the answer.
03:52 My frustration of the past 14 years, but particularly since 2019,
03:58 is that in saying levelling up, the government was tapping into something real that people yearned for,
04:04 but they didn't have a viable plan, and they didn't do the hard yards.
04:08 That's unforgivable.
04:09 And we intend to turn that around and make sure that we can make that connection real and change places across the black country.
04:16 Thank you for your question.