POLITICS: We don't back Tory candidate

I would like to state clearly and unequivocally that my family, who have owned the Dunstaburgh Castle Hotel for 25 years, do not support Anne-Marie Trevelyan or the Conservative Party and will not be voting for her.

Brexit, which Mrs Trevelyan campaigned for so passionately, has already had a significant negative effect upon my business and local tourism.

Visitors are uncertain of their future and have been far more careful with their spending this season, costs have shot up significantly, and all along our beautiful coastline, businesses that have thrived in the past 15 years cannot recruit summer staff from oversees as their perception of the UK has changed from an open and friendly country to a nation of Little Englanders.

I have a fantastic team of local English staff, who I value enormously and who will always be the backbone of my business. However, I also have a number of excellent European staff, who work extremely hard, pay their fair share of taxes and contribute positively to our village community.

With Brexit, these decent, hard-working people still don’t know whether they’ll be allowed to stay in a place that they now call home, despite the fact that they’ve put down family roots and have lovely children born in the UK and raised as British nationals.

It is ironic that a hard Brexiteer such as Mrs Trevelyan should use my hotel as a backdrop for a publicity photo.

The only results of this Tory Government that I can see is a failing NHS, starved of funds by central government, failing social care from council budgets slashed by a Tory Treasury, and schools so starved of funds that they are having to cut teachers and support staff and increase class sizes.

It has exacerbated the gap between rich and poor, turned a blind-eye to tax evasion by big business and billionaires, and shown a disregard for our environment and the greatest threat to mankind by scrapping the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

After seven years of Tory rule, I am appalled at the dismantling of our society’s support network. Another five years of this and I wonder what sort of nation our children will inherit.

Then there is a £100billion bill for Brexit.

If this is what ‘strong and stable’ Government looks like, then Anne-Marie Trevlyan and Theresa May can keep it, thank you. I do not, and will never, support Anne-Marie Trevelyan as MP for our area.

Victoria Fyffe,

Dunstanburgh Castle Hotel,

Embleton