Labour candidate for West Midlands mayor Siôn Simon will launch his campaign in Wolverhampton today with a patriotic rallying cry for a fair deal for England.
The former Erdington MP will demand English regions like the West Midlands get as good a devolution deal and share of national funding as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Mr Simon, who is a West Midlands Euro-MP, says England has been ‘short-changed’ by Governments over many years and believes that is why many English voters have rejected the Labour Party in recent years.
Although he campaigned for remain last year, Mr Simon believes Brexit, along with the creation of metro mayors, now offers a new opportunity for English regions to assert themselves and says the party should not be afraid of flying the flag for England.
Labour has been seen as anti-patriotic in recent years - a problem highlighted by the infamous tweet in 2014 in which MP Emily Thornberry appeared to sneer at a home in Kent flying the St George flag.
She resigned from the front bench in the wake of the criticism.
Siôn Simon will be joined at his launch by Labour deputy leader and West Bromwich East MP Tom Watson and Wolverhampton MP Emma Reynolds.
He is expected to say: “Labour is the party of working men and women in England. It was always so. But it will not always be so unless English people, particularly in hard-pressed urban areas, start to feel they’re getting their fair share of the national pie. I will fly the English flag in the West Midlands. We have put up with this unfairness for too long.
“The convergence of Brexit with a new era of regional government in 2017 brings an opportunity to do something about the UK’s incredibly unfair funding system. In the heart of England, we deserve our fair share of the national pie’.
“We’ve been left in a mess. David Cameron and George Osborne abandoned the country. Just as generations of London politicians before them left English public services to shrink from the dazzle of new hospitals and schools in Scotland and Wales. The Tory government in London has no plan. We must seize the moment and win back the hearts and minds of English voters who feel like they’ve been abandoned too.”
He will highlight a national funding mechanism known as the Barnett Formula which awards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a disproportionate, in relation to their populations, share of Government money.
Under the formula public spending per head in Scotland is £10,536 a year, in London £10,129 and in the West Midlands just £8,750.
