Richard Holden: This spring’s local elections. For levelling-up to work, we need local councils and leaders who back it.

The sad truth is that many local Labour councils and local bureaucracies don’t want it: they’re scared of it.

Richard Holden: The Chancellor shouldn’t try to win a spending arms race with Labour – which we would lose anyway

Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is: it’s all about economic credibility, stupid. Because come 2024, it certainly will be.

Richard Holden: This first Johnson year demanded tough short-term decisions. The coming second will demand tough long-term ones.

The towns of the North East, left behind for generations by Labour, will need to see their Conservative MPs forging a durable path to a future.

Richard Holden: This week’s spending review must show voters in Red Wall seats like mine that they were right to trust us

It’s vital that on education, policing and infrastructure, as much clarity is given as possible to departments as possible in terms of long-term funding.

Richard Holden: Access to cash. Here in County Durham, it matters to voters. Sunak should help to guarantee it.

For many in my community – particularly those on tight budgets, pensioners, and people trying to manage their way out of debt – cash is what they live by.

Richard Holden: Across the “Blue Wall”, there’s little sign Starmer’s approach to the crisis has cut through

His “Goldilocks Politics” of “too much/too little, too fast/too slow” throughout the pandemic is unlikely to win over voters.

Richard Holden: Here in Durham, Labour ponder tinkering with statues – while local people yearn for jobs, security and pay

We need to switch from specifying “what’s allowed to open” to “what in the interest of public health needs to continue to be restricted.”

Richard Holden: Labour must work with new Red Wall Tory MPs for the common good – or it will be swept aside

Shotley Bridge hospital was mentioned in Parliament three times in ten years by my predecessors; and as often by me in the last six months. 

Richard Holden: A call to CCHQ. Spare no effort to help us consolidate our breakthrough in the North East during next year’s elections.

I’ve noticed in my constituency that, to parts of the community, I am a disruption to the local natural order.

Richard Holden: Five ideas for the new Chancellor’s Budget

The Chancellor could please every beer & cider drinker; charity donor; motorhome manufacturer, retailer and owner; caravan site owner, and public toilet user in Britain.

Richard Holden: There’s no time like a Monday afternoon for a Maiden Speech

I’m looking forward to helping put some local and national issues on the table when I make mine later today.

Richard Holden: The Red Wall. My part in its downfall. How I won North West Durham – Labour since its creation.

We need to build long-term trust to hold seats like this one. We can win again – but we must deliver.

Election Battlegrounds 5) The North East

This region contains a string of those ‘Labour Leave’ seats which are central to the Tory strategy – but will the Brexit Party trip them up?

Skelton on One Nation, and how Tories must take the lead in reviving towns which have been left to rot

The patriotic, Brexit-voting working class, neglected for decades by Labour, must now be championed by the Conservatives.

Profile: Philip May, the Prime Minister’s closest and best sounding board

He would be averse to leaving without a deal, but even more alarmed by the idea of taking any course of action which risked breaking the Tory Party into fragments.