Take a look at the profiles by Fraser Nelson and Andrew Morrison on Glasgow East - or "Third Scotland" as Fraser calls some areas within it (there are some prosperous parts as well).
In the Calton ward male life expectancy is 53.9 years. Contrast Iraq (67.5); Iran (70); North Korea (71.4) and the Gaza strip (70.5). It's described in desperate terms as a place of material, spiritual and aspirational poverty. Deprivation and dependency have been entrenched for generations. 44% are on incapacity benefit; 37% live in a workless household; 30% of homes are occupied by a lone parent. Rates of addiction, smoking, alcoholism, suicide, diabetes, heart disease and cancer steeple above the national average.
Glasgow East is where we find the Easterhouse estate, which inspired Iain Duncan Smith to set up the Centre for Social Justice. It's worth remembering what he said about his first visit:
"I walked around part of the estate with a local Baptist minister. The grey, wet day matched the bleakness of nearly everything I saw. He showed me abandoned, boarded up houses surrounded by litter and disfigured by graffiti. We stopped in a sheltered walkway where heroin addicts inject the drug into their bodies. I looked into one building. In a stairwell I saw a place where a child had been playing. A discarded teddy bear lay in the corner. A perfectly ordinary sight. Except that next to it lay the paraphernalia of a crack cocaine addict. What hope does that child have? 'What are you doing here?' shouted one resident. 'This has always been a Labour area,' he told me. 'Yes and look around you', I said."
The Conservatives won't come close to winning this by-election. But it presents an extraordinary opportunity to invite the nation's media to visit this archetypal Labour area and take that look around themselves - to see how Labour has betrayed the poorest in our society. If Labour is not for these people it is for nobody. Instead Labour has taken their votes for granted and utterly failed to improve their lives. Fraser Nelson describes it as Gordon Brown's "dirty little secret." It's time to put the spotlights on.
Social Justice is one of the strongest themes of David Cameron's leadership. This is a chance to show that the Conservative Party really means what it says, that it genuinely intends to be a party for all Briton and all Britons. As Fraser Nelson says:
"Although David Cameron has no chance of winning here, he should still send his shadow Cabinet up three times, as he did in Crewe and Nantwich. For what is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates."
This is an important strategic moment. After the 10p by-election & the lost deposit by-election, we can make this the social justice by-election. We can focus national attention on the disastrous human costs of Labour's failings. We can show that our determination to fight poverty is authentic.
