‘I’m an ex-Tory parliamentary candidate. Here’s why I’m now backing Labour’

It was reported earlier this month that a Tory MP complained the country is worse than 14 years ago when the Tories were first elected. I feel the same and could not disagree with this. It is evident there is only one person in this contest that looks like a Prime Minister and sounds like a Prime Minister, and that is of course the Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer.

Like many business people, I put my trust in the Tories in 2010. I campaigned for the Tories. I even tried to get elected as a Conservative MP in Leicester – the youngest person of Asian heritage to ever do so in the party’s history (at the time) – and GLA member in London, and I served as deputy chairman of the London Conservatives (again, at the time, the youngest person of Asian heritage to ever have done so).

But I – like thousands of others in the business community – have concluded that, rather than renewal, the Tories have given us decline. Economic incompetence landed us with rising mortgages and Rishi Sunak’s punishing 25 tax rises.

The Tories have failed business and driven the NHS into the ground

The business community knows we need growth and a serious plan to provide workers with skills so we can compete. Instead, we’ve had Tory MPs blocking much needed planning reforms and abject failure to support the huge numbers of ‘economically inactive’ back to work.

The British Asian community are entrepreneurial and aspirational. We need a government and a leader that will support us – currently, we have the opposite. A government led by Keir has a definitive, ambitious plan for our economy and businesses. More than anything else, they will give us the stability we so desperately need in the business sector currently.

The NHS, which is the lifeline of so many of us (and has personally saved the lives of me and my family), has been driven into the ground. Waiting lists for treatment at record levels, desperately worried patients waiting too long for cancer diagnosis and treatment. So many parents I know feeling helpless battling the system in an attempt to get some mental health care for their teenage children.

Starmer is a Prime Minister-in-waiting, while Sunak looks weak

After 14 years, it’s time for change. Keir Starmer has changed the Labour Party. He is a Prime Minister-in-waiting with a plan in command of events. In contrast, Rishi Sunak – and it gives me no pleasure to say this as I even campaigned with him in the 2015 election – looks weak, gets pushed around by hardliners on his backbenches and is simply out of his depth.

What struck me the most having met and campaigned with and for the last four Tory PMs (Sunak, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron) – is Keir’s humility, passion and commitment to making Britain a better more prosperous place for all. Something which makes him unique in this race to be our next PM, and why I certainly want to see him and his team in No 10.

It’s time for change – it’s time for Keir Starmer and Labour

Keir’s background is impressive and aspirational. As a clever child, he went to a selective state school, rather than a private school like so many at the top of British politics.

Unlike many of his counterparts, he got an undergraduate degree in law at the University of Leeds, rather than studying politics or economics at Oxford or Cambridge. He became a successful lawyer, eventually rising to one of the top legal positions in the country: director of public prosecutions. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014 for services to “law and criminal justice”.

His background appeals to British voters. He is a serious man of integrity – in stark contrast to the Conservative leaders of recent years.

The top team around Keir – Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Yvette Cooper, my old Leicester friend Jonathan Ashworth – are a serious, credible government-in-waiting, as well as a formidable shadow ministerial team, with figures such as Andrew Gwynne, Bill Esterson, Seema Malhotra and Stephen Kinnock to mention a few!

At the next general election, the British Asian community will be saying it’s time for change. Like me, they will be saying it’s time for Keir Starmer and Labour.