North East needs more investment from the government to win back trust, says mayor

LABOUR has not invested enough in the North East since coming to power and must deliver more to win back voters’ trust, the region’s mayor says.

- DANIEL HOLLAND

Kim McGuinness has called on the Government to pump more cash into the North of England, after seeing her party suffer a backlash at the ballot box last week.

Labour haemorrhaged votes as it lost council seats to Reform in both Northumberland and County Durham, where it now has just four councillors following a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s party that saw it sweep into power at County Hall.

A brutal set of local election results in traditional heartlands has prompted calls from some of Labour’s own MPs for the Government to change tack on controversial policies like cuts to the winter fuel allowance, while a group of ‘red wall’ MPs has urged ministers to “break away from Treasury orthodoxy otherwise we will never get the investment we desperately need”.

Ms McGuinness is marking one year in her job this week, having taken office two months before last year’s general election, and told the Local Democracy Reporting Service yesterday that she was “impatient” for change.

She said: “I completely understand, after 14 years of utter rubbish and decline, why people want change. You go to communities in our region and you can feel that it is left behind.

“You can feel that there has been political decision after political decision to not invest in those places, and I understand why people are frustrated.