James Hamblin: Conservative councillors must win back the electorate’s trust one street at a time

James Hamblin was the Parliamentary Candidate in Cardiff West in the 2024 General Election. He has since stood in a Cardiff Council by-election.

“If this was a posh area, the council would have sorted it already. But because it’s Clive Street, we’re ignored.”

That was what one resident told me on the doorstep in Clive Street, in Cardiff, on the day of the by-election. They have spent years pleading with Labour-run Cardiff Council to tackle the problem of the overgrown trees that line their street.

The story of Clive Street is one that is repeated up and down the country. It’s emblematic of Labour’s attitude towards similar areas and people it so often takes for granted.

On Clive Street, the branches overhang so much that they block the streetlights, making the street dark and dangerous at night. One falling branch could easily cause a fatal accident – in fact, one resident has already reported a falling branch has hit her car. Others are rightly concerned it could just as easily have hit a passer-by and vulnerable people across the country have similar worries.

Top that with issues such as telephone wires getting tangled up and fallen leaves clogging drains and pavements, and it’s no wonder the residents of Clive Street feel like their street has become a hazard more than something to be proud of.

Fed up residents have raised petitions, chased councillors, and written letters, yet they’ve been met only with excuses or silence. Many have given up. Unsurprisingly, several people told me they no longer bother voting. “What’s the point”, they said, “when nothing ever changes?”

Clive Street serves as a microcosm of many inner-city areas across the UK. Residents are often neglected, their problems often dismissed as if their concerns simply don’t matter. This is wrong.

The majority of such examples are in Labour-controlled areas. Their councillors, smug with their comfortable majorities, just become complacent and lazy. When residents try to raise real issues, they are often fobbed off or bounced around in loops. People are given a stark message: if you are from a “good” area of town, you have a voice. Otherwise, you are ignored – even (or, perhaps, especially) if you’ve loyally voted Labour for decades.

In Cardiff, the local Conservative group, led ably by Councillor John Lancaster, have already secured several tangible changes   pushing the inept Labour council into action. But this is just one example of the neglect of areas of the country that for decades have loyally voted Labour with nothing to show for it.

This disregard gnaws at trust in politics. It’s why so many of the residents I spoke to on Clive Street said they don’t vote any more. They’ve lobbied, signed petitions, written letters, but have been disregarded at every turn. It’s not just that they’re frustrated with a council that refuses to listen, but that they feel there is a political culture that doesn’t care about their day-to-day world.

But problems like this are important. Overgrown trees may not be big news, but to the people who have to live with it day after day, fixing this is the difference between enjoying the area they live in or resenting it. These overgrown trees are a daily reminder that they have been left behind.

When problems like this are left to fester year after year, it reinforces that sense that politics is remote, indifferent, and biased against the average person – no wonder only 24 per cent of them bothered to turn out for the election.

That’s why I’ve launched a campaign with residents to push the council into action. It’s a simple goal: get the trees trimmed, the drains cleared, and street lighting restored properly. It won’t revolutionise Cardiff in a day, but it will demonstrate that there is someone willing to listen and advocate on behalf of those people that have been ignored for so long.

This is what Conservatism must mean in practice: practical action, not rhetoric. A politics that  values all communities enough to engage with their troubles, recovering a sense of dignity everyone deserves.

Now, this is not the whole solution, but it is a key component. One resident was sceptical that any politician would make the promised changes – but after much debate with me on the doorstep, she finished by saying I had almost convinced her to vote Conservative. The reality is that you can’t turn a “no” into a “yes” without a “maybe” in between.

It may be just one street in Cardiff, but I’ve heard this tale told repeatedly in neighbourhood after neighbourhood throughout Britain. Abandoned by local authorities, disregarded when they speak up, residents have simply lost confidence that politics is ever going to be about them.

If Labour won’t listen to the Clive Streets of this country, then we Conservatives must and will. By standing up for people in forgotten places and fighting for practical improvements that restore pride and safety to their streets, we can show that elected representatives can still make a difference. That is how we rebuild trust, one street at a time.