This is how Birmingham will ‘welcome’ the Tories for their conference

I assume that literally no Conservative Members of Parliament are attending their party conference in Birmingham this week. Not because the then-cabinet office minister Heather Wheeler once described my city as “godawful” – but instead because they think that their own government is godawful, and frankly don’t want to go to a big party full of journalists who will make them answer questions about that.

A lot of journalists have been in touch with me as a resident and representative in the city, not – as is usual – for recommendations for good restaurants, but instead to meet up while they are here. I presume this is because I may be one of the very few MPs not in the cabinet who will actually be in Birmingham on the week of the shindig.

I don’t blame my Conservative colleagues. I didn’t much relish attending Labour conference in the years where I was just a prop to be shouted at, never feeling as if I could proudly defend my party as I may have wanted to. Oh, how times have changed. I return from Liverpool having had a lovely, if tiring-on-the-feet kind of time.

Hope is my drug of choice, I am very much in the pocket of big hope. Hope was what I found blowing around in Liverpool in a gale, hope that means that for the next 18 months my feet will hurt even more and my fingers will bleed, because that is the level of work that must be done. On we go.

Hope will not be in great supply at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham this week, and I will be interested to see how the people of Birmingham react to the presence of the Conservative Party conference. Of course, there will be protests against the government – there always are. Although, I am pleased to say that in Birmingham, they tend to be less vitriolic than some I have seen elsewhere. I would warn anyone taking to the streets that protest must be robust yet reasonable, because we must not give the Conservatives the gift of the higher ground.

Currently, with their actions to enrich the richest and impoverish literally everyone else, they are protesting themselves. Let them dance on the head of that pin without giving Suella Braverman any justification for her hatred of any organised dissent.

Most people in our city won’t notice that they are here, but every single one of them will know that the Tories are in power. All across Birmingham, people will be getting under blankets to save on their energy bills. In the 10 constituencies in the city, people will be trying to make appointments to quickly fix their mortgage rates, terrified of the spiralling costs to come.

Every hospital will have a queue of ambulances outside and an even longer queue of people waiting for one in their homes. Every care home in Birmingham will be calling around looking for staff, unable to fill the shortages. The court houses in the shiny city centre will postpone more cases in the days that the Tories come along to drink booze in our convention centre. Rape victims will walk down the steps of the crown court building deflated and desperate to drop out of getting justice because they have just been told they will have to wait another year.

I expect that the reception the Conservatives will get in my city will be poor. Not because we don’t want them here, or because we don’t generally vote for them, but because we don’t want to be disappointed anymore. We are laid-back people, generally – a live and let live, just leave me out of the drama kind of tribe – but every one of us has been dragged into these frightening, uncertain and unwanted times.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

The people working at the convention centre will be the only people in attendance who have been or are still on universal credit. They will be asked to pour champagne for people who will be banking over £50,000 extra thanks to the budget, while they wait to hear how their and their loved ones’ benefits will be cut. They will smile and behave because they need their jobs, but they will look on, as will the rest of us, thinking, “You don’t know what lives are like in our home town, you’ll never have the same fears.”

I invite any member of the cabinet who is in my city this week to pull their heads out of the sand and come to my office for the day. Instead of standing in front of banners and slogans, to come and see Birmingham lives in their full glory. My constituents wouldn’t be rude, but they would be honest, and frankly, I doubt there will be any of that happening in the fancy rooms at the conference.

No one will come, because it is easier to stand on a platform and tell the people that they don’t understand the economy than it is to say it to the face of someone about to lose their home.

They are welcome in my city as guests, but they are no longer welcome in our lives.

Jess Phillips is the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding