Lisa Nandy: ‘Levelling up under the Tories is dead. Labour is the only answer’
Labour is “coming back to finish the job” of the New Labour government, Lisa Nandy has vowed, saying the party has undergone a dramatic transformation and is now “fit to govern”.
In an interview with the Guardian, Nandy revealed Labour was now working with the former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, who was previously tasked by Michael Gove to develop his levelling up strategy. Haldane is working with Nandy on the party’s strategy for regional growth, which Nandy described as “dead” under the Conservatives.
The shadow levelling up secretary spoke at the Labour conference in Liverpool at an event with the Conservative-led thinktank Onward, a leading proponent of levelling up, alongside the Tory MP Danny Kruger. “They came to this conference because they can see that levelling up under the Tories is dead. It is the only answer for the country and Labour is where it’s at.
“That gave me a lot of confidence that the prize isn’t just within our reach – that better country that we want to build – but it’s absolutely within our reach. I never thought I would say this three years ago either.”
Nandy said she had always spoken pragmatically about the chances of Labour winning the next election after losing swathes of voters in the north of England in the disastrous 2019 election.
But she said the party was now at a moment in history – compounded by a new ideological divide with the Conservatives – where it was able to seize a majority if Keir Starmer could convey a vision for the country.
“Two years ago, I came to a conference and said that we have a mountain to climb to win the next general election, she said. “We’d lost our entire Labour base in every nation and region of the UK. And it wasn’t clear whether there was a
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