The Tories promised to “level up” our hard-hit communities in the North.
The only level that went up was the level of the floods devastating towns and villages yet again. While Boris Johnson plays Cabinet reshuffle games, the Calder hit record heights, drowning homes and businesses.
After the catastrophic inundation of Boxing Day 2015, David Cameron and George Osborne (remember them?) vowed to “spend even more” to save threatened towns and villages.
They came and went, and so did the money. First it was £40million, and then it was £30million and then people stopped asking.
Work on flood defences was slow to start, lagged interminably and when the rains came back this week, they were unfinished and unable to cope.
The only difference between today and five years ago is the name of the storm: for Desmond, read Ciara.
No wonder the folk of Mytholmroyd, Luddendenfoot, Hebden Bridge, Huddersfield and Todmorden are shaking their fists in anger – in between bailing out the dirty river deluge. They were let down again by Tory austerity.
The river of money that flowed into the Tory party found no tributary into the flood-hit Calder Valley.
I share their wrath. I was out with sandbags at 5.30am on Sunday when flood water lapped my door. Only hundreds of yards away in Sutton-in-Craven, cars were submerged.
The Aire Valley where I live is one long lake stretching for miles, with the railway snaking through on raised embankments. But the line is flooded further down, service is suspended.
The river has broken its banks and is indistinguishable from the flooded fields. God help the people down-river in Leeds, where the city centre went under water last time.
Craig Whittaker, Tory MP for Calder Valley, bleats: “The clean-up operation will be a major one.” You don’t say.
But what do they care? They cleaned up the votes, and that’s all that bothers them. Don’t bring your fake sympathy up ‘ere, Boris, or you’ll get the Fishlake treatment again.
