Election special Marcus Jones tells of delight after winning seat for Tories

RETURNING MP Marcus Jones said he was delighted as he won the Nuneaton seat for the Conservatives.

Nuneaton was held by the Tories in 2015 with a majority of 4,882 over the Labour Party.

It had been a Conservative seat since the 2010 General Election when the party took it from Labour.

After the result was announced at the Jubilee Sports Centre, on Greenmoor Road, Mr Jones said: “For the last seven years, it’s been my abso- lute honour and privilege to represent the people of Nuneaton, Arley and Hartshill.

“I feel that I have done that to the best of my ability over that period and I am absolutely delighted that the people of this area have had to faith in me for another five years.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen nationally, we have seen some exit polls tonight which suggest one result but we don’t yet know.

“The only polls that count are that the ones that are declared and counted across the country so we need to see what happens in that sense but what I can say to the people of Nuneaton, Arley and Hartshill is that I will be there as a strong representative for them in Parliament for the next five years.”

The other candidates contesting the Nuneaton seat were Chris Brookes (Green), Philip Johnson (Labour), Richard Brighton-Knight (Lib Dem) and Craig Carpenter (UKIP).

Mr Johnson said: “I am happy with that result. The votes went up considerable from where we started out.

“I am obviously disappointed not to win but I think we fought a good campaign. When we heard that exit poll a few hours ago we were all very excited and I think there are going to be some interesting results tonight.”

When Johnson lost his county council seat last month he slammed his leader Jeremy Corbyn, but he doesn’t seem so against him now:

“I think Jeremy Corbyn has exceeded all our expectation. We have had a few too many gaffes during the campaign but his campaign has been run really well. Jeremy Corbyn will not be prime minister in the morning but it will be interesting to see what happens and who sides with who.”

He has made some scathing comments about Theresa May too. He added: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Theresa May is not prime minister by the end of the week, the Conservatives are quite tough when they think someone has failed and she has failed in this election, it was a very poor campaign.”