HOME Secretary Amber Rudd is a typical Tory. She finds it hard to distinguish between what is really happening and what she would like to happen.

Speaking to the Police Federation in Birmingham she said that crime was down even though the police had lost 20,000 officers. It was all too much for one cop who told her: "If crime is down, I might as well be the chief dancer for the Bolshoi Ballet."

The same picture keeps repeating. We have now had nearly eight years of austerity measures, time enough to wipe out the deficit, which was going to be done in four years. I recall David Cameron’s speech on immigration: “No ifs or buts, immigration will be cut to tens of thousands.” It never happened.

Theresa May is saying the same thing, yet she was the longest serving Home Secretary since Chuter Ede in the 1940s and 1950s and she never did cut immigration when she had the best of opportunities.

These Tories have brought nothing but hardship to the people in the North-East. You could write a book on public services that have vanished or are under severe threat, and now suddenly inflation is rising faster than wages so people are losing more money.

I recall Tory Prime Minister Harold McMillan saying in the 1960s “you’ve never had it so good”. All you could say to the people in the North-East today is “you’ve never had it so bad”.

Name supplied, Howden-le-Wear