Rishi Sunal admits taking money from deprived areas

Yep, because they're too stupid or gullible to work out that council budgets are limited by funding from central government, which has been drastically slashed since 2010.

You could see it in interviews in the media and even in posts on this forum leading up to the last election: Often mixing the economic issues in with social ones about identity politics etc - people absolutely fuming about the failures of the left; all the terrible things Labour had done or failed to do; how having voted Labour all their lives they were going to vote Tory for the first time because it was time for "a change". er - a change from the last ten years of Tory government, apparently. Or maybe they just hadn't noticed who was already in power.

You couldn't make it up, but the human capacity for stupidity never ceases to amaze. So I wouldn't be too confident of any of this changing any time soon. The government will take the money away from the areas that need it just as Sunak describes, those areas will become poorer, and the Tories will find somebody to blame. And people will believe them.

Still, they got Brexit done eh? That's gotta help.

I'm not sure it's even about divide and rule. It's about saying whatever gets them the job. It's that simple. Naked careerism. That said I hope Sunak wins because even though he is a low grade Tory, at least he understands the connection between the economy and tax. And I don't like what Truss is saying about stopping all "handouts" this morning. She is saying take less tax, bugger the public sector and leave the poor to help themselves. Of the two, that's worse in my eyes.

How have we sunk so low?

Twelve years of Tory policies.

It’s absolutely chilling. It’s literally taking from the mouths of people who can’t eat or heat their homes to give as a reward to those who vote Tory. How have we sunk this low? Politics should not be this disgusting race to the bottom.
And agree with PP that Truss, Johnson, all of them just as culpable. They all support these policies. Child poverty, food bank use, all these things have rocketed under the Tories. They can’t deny it. Instead they transfer money to the leafy shires to help themselves divide and rule. Shame on them

He’s so blatant. Also the excuse that he’s concerned about deprived rural areas isn’t plausible given he emphasises the word “deprived” when talking of urban areas but doesn’t when talking about where the money should go.

It’s dodgy politics to pay off the areas that support you or the politicians that support you. This Tory government has been full of it.

Why is he boasting that he changed Labour policies that funded deprived inner city areas? He's only even been an MP since 2015, became Sec to the Treasury in 2019, Chancellor in 2020. Labour haven't been in government since 2010. Has no one else in the Conservative Party done anything about Labour policies in all that time?

I want to know who has been sitting on this footage, why they have sold it to the newspapers now and what they have vested in a win for Truss. The footage is apparently from 29 July 2022; if someone held back on it, it was only for a few days.

The cuts were very minimal during austerity in those areas. Labour areas got battered and then punished Labour for it by voting Tory (Red wall).

I'm even more concerned that Starmer doesn't either. THere's no hope.

Anyone who thinks that Rishi was talking about rural deprivation is kidding themselves. He was talking to Tory voters in Royal Tunbridge Wells. 🙄

For those saying "Rural areas have deprivation too" Well, thats fine of course they do... but the answer isn't to take money from urban poor areas to give to rural poor areas.. the answer to to increase the funding to the rural deprived areas
After all, Brexit, pushed by Sunak, released 'billions in extra monies for this sort of thing.

He didn't say he was combating rural poverty. He actually said he took money away from deprived areas to give to Royal Tunbridge Wells. With its lovely Conservative majority.🙈

If that was really their motivation, they would leave the Tory party in the face of extensive evidence that their approach isn't working. There might be a small minority who make that shift, but all the evidence suggests that the vast majority don't actually give a shit.
If someone has invested their whole identity into being a Tory, with the belief this approach will make life better for all, they may not either look too deeply into the evidence of whether its working, or have some cognitive dissonance going on because it's hard to admit to yourself you could be wrong.
You might say they should look at the evidence properly, but not everyone does, so I think it's still possible for people to be interested in improving lives across the board and be a Tory.

It's astonishing really. The opposition parties will be able to take most of their next general election campaigns straight out of the mouths of the Tories themselves. This leadership election has given them so many choice quotes from high profile Tories regarding their own record in government. You couldn't make it up!

I hope they use it wisely.

I don't doubt that someone has an agenda.

Liz Truss bears equal responsibility for the policies of the current government, though, in my view. She wasn't chancellor, but she was part of the Cabinet. If she didn't agree with the approach of diverting funds away from deprived communities into wealthier ones, then she should have resigned. That's how collective responsibility works.

He's just proved that levelling up is a load of bollocks.

I want to know who has been sitting on this footage, why they have sold it to the newspapers now and what they have vested in a win for Truss.

This is someone's horrible scheme. I'm not saying that Rishi isn't a shit, but that there is an agenda being played here and it's super obvious.

It all comes back to that old chestnut, doesn't it. When someone tells you who they are, believe them!

If that was really their motivation, they would leave the Tory party in the face of extensive evidence that their approach isn't working. There might be a small minority who make that shift, but all the evidence suggests that the vast majority don't actually give a shit.

Bless you. Many people do get into politics because they're concerned about people other than themselves, but they do not join the Tory party for that reason!

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. Maybe not the vast majority of Tories, but there are some. I've worked with lots of politicians over the years They have a different view on how to achieve it!

No, that is not the point he was making. The point he was making is he moved funding from deprived urban areas to less deprived rural areas.

There are undoubtedly poor individuals in wealthy areas, but there are far fewer of them as a percentage of the overall population. There are higher numbers of poor people in deprived areas. Their funding was cut, and cut ferociously.

That is why we have seen food bank use rocket, child poverty increase.

It is disgusting to take money from the poor. It is disgusting to take a lot of money from a large number of poor people to give a little bit of money to a small group of different poor people.

Sunak fucked up when he admitted it so baldly.

Bless you. Many people do get into politics because they're concerned about people other than themselves, but they do not join the Tory party for that reason!

Listen to what he actually said. He said that he had taken funding from "deprived urban areas" into "areas like this", ie areas like Tunbridge Wells.

If his actual meaning had been that he was trying to tackle rural deprivation, he would have phrased it differently. For example, he would have talked about taking funding out of urban areas in order to put it into rural areas - there would have been no need for the emphasis on "deprived", as his point would have been that deprivation existed in both areas. And frankly, if that was really what he meant, speaking in a place like TW which is known for its prosperity, I would have expected him to spell out much more explicitly what he actually meant, eg by saying that it's wrong to assume that deprivation only exists in cities, there are deprived people here as well.

I think there can be no doubt about what he really meant, no matter how he tries to spin it now. And Liz Truss had better not try to score points of the back of this video either, because she was part of the Cabinet that implemented this policy and bears her share of the collective responsibility. Shame on the whole bloody lot of them!

Isn’t this a bit of a storm in a tea cup? There is awful deprivation in many ‘wealthy’ rural towns. I live in a rural area (opposite side to the country to TW) that’s classic for it. Almost every town round here is of two halves. Some of the most expensive towns in the SW have some pretty extreme poverty and we also have lack of services and major lack of transport. I honestly think it’s harder to be poor in rural areas. Surely the point he was making is that it’s not good to only concentrate on urban areas? Hate the torys, never voted for them, never will but can’t really understand why everyone is frothing over this. I suppose everyone thinks life in the countryside is rosy.