On June 8th the people of the Ribble Valley went to the polls to select their MP for the next parliament. The turnout of 70.8% was the largest since 1997. Nigel Evans was re-elected as the MP for the Ribble Valley by a majority of 13000 votes.
This was the highest number of votes and the largest vote share of Mr Evans’ parliamentary career. Nigel had this to say:
“I am absolutely delighted that the people of the Ribble Valley have once again selected me to represent them in parliament. I truly love this area and its people – it has been my home for a quarter of a century and it has been extremely good to me. I want to thank everyone who voted for me. I am very happy to say that my thirty-one thousand votes is the most I have ever received and it is excellent to see that the turnout was so high compared to previous years.
“Nationally, however, the picture was not so favourable. Whilst the Conservatives remain the largest party by a considerable margin, there is no denying that the result was underwhelming. We no longer have an overall majority in the House of Commons and this is almost solely due to the disastrous national Conservative campaign.
“Our manifesto was an assault on our core voters, the elderly, and a series of misguided policy announcements meant that the national debate focussed on questions over social care, school meals and fox hunting. I hope that lessons have been learnt during this campaign. The Brexit negotiations are the most important political issue in the next few years and they need to be done right.”
The Conservatives won 318 seats in last week’s election – 8 seats shy of the 326 needed for an overall majority in the Commons.