What the candidates thought of the result

Minutes after the result was declared, we caught up with the four men who stood in Wokingham to find out how they felt about the way in which the constituency had voted. Interviews: PHIL CREIGHTON

JOHN REDWOOD, Conservative

VERY good to have a lot of support from the public and I’ll try and live up to the trust they’ve placed in me.

I know there’s a lot to do and I’ve taken on board their messages. Indeed, some of the things they’re most concerned about are traffic, congestion, planning, school funding - things I was already working on when the election came along, I’ll redouble my efforts in the new parliament.

We have to wait to see what kind of Government is going to form, but assuming it’s a Conservative government without the same kind of large majority we were hoping for I think we’ve got to target and focus.

I think the two priorities for me are making sure we improve and encourage the economic recovery, so far so good but it’s been quite slow and we need more and better paid jobs generally and to make sure that I can help them on getting a really good relationship with our European partners.

A lot of us wanted to leave the European Union but we don’t want to leave Europe, indeed we need all sorts of good relationships and we want freedom of travel for tourists and investors and plenty of free trade and all that kind of thing and I want to help the government to achieve it.

I’m going to London and set up my office again, I want to get back on doing what I was doing when the election was called.

It’s business as usual.

ANDY CROY, Labour

TONIGHT I feel tired, it’s been a very, very long day. I’m very, very pleased that our vote has gone from 8,000 to 15,000 so it’s nearly doubled and we’re clearly the second parliamentary party in the constituency .

It’s great that so many people have opted for Labour’s vision of a country that works for everybody, not just the few.

It’s very humbling as well, lots of people, most of whom I haven’t met, are willing to put their trust in me and put a cross next to my name. It’s humbling.

I will obviously try and build on what we’ve done and we’ll carry on working hard . It’s not easy being in the Labour party in Wokingham – you have to work very hard for what you get and we’ll build on what we’ve done.

CLIVE JONES, Liberal Democrat

I’M pleased that our vote went up, the numbers went up and we went up in percentage terms which is good.

We probably scored as much a 9% above what the party has polled nationally, that shows we have run a very good campaign.

We had the better of the four campaigns in Wokingham, we tried to engage the electorate we delivered more leaflets than all the other parties put together so we gave people the opportunity to see what the Liberal Democrats stand for.

They have decided that they want to have a Conservative for their MP, an arch Brexiter in a constituency that wanted to remain in the EU.

It’s a little bit of a strange decision, but there you go, I guess that’s politics.

We’re still the second largest party on the council and I will predict that we will make some gains at the elections in May 2018 and 19 and 20.

We’ve got some very good candidates and we will be coming up with some very good policies in the next six months.

RUSSELL SEYMOUR, Green

CLEARLY there is a core of Green votes in Wokingham and I’m very happy to work on that for next time.

Arguably yes, the vote tonight may reduce the effect of a Conservative government.

Clearly people wanted to vote against the Conservative government rather than for a group of parties.

It’s a bit disappointing for the Greens, but this time there’s been tactical voting and we’ll come back stronger next time.

This is the first time I’ve campaigned as an MP. Even four or five weeks ago I wasn’t expecting to be up here with my name on the ballot paper but I believe it’s very important for people to have a say in who they vote for.

This has been positive for me, I’ve not done as much as I would have liked to and this has been very, very positive and I’ll certainly do much better in five years time with a much better campaign.