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Local elections 2022: Tories lose hundreds of seats to Labour and Lib Dems; Sinn Féin set to become largest party in NI elections – live
Boris Johnson conceeds that the local election results have been ‘mixed’ for the consevative party, but content that they’ve had ‘remarkable gains’ in some places.
The Prime Minister started by paying tribute to Conservative councillors, and said the result were “mixed” and also “tough” in some parts of the country.
He noted that there were “quite remarkable gains in places that have not voted Conservative for a long time, if ever”.
He said that the message he drew from the results was that people want him to get on with “the big issues that matter to them”.
Johnson said: It is mid-term. It’s certainly a mixed set of results. We had a tough night in some parts of the country but on the other hand in other parts of the country you are still seeing Conservatives going forward and making quite remarkable gains in places that haven’t voted Conservative for a long time, if ever …
The big lesson from this is that this is a message from voters that what they want us to do above all – one, two and three – is focus on the big issues that matter to them, taking the country forward, making sure we fix the post-Covid aftershock, get us all through the economic aftershocks in the way we got through Covid, fix the energy supply issues, that’s where the inflationary spike is coming, and keep going with our agenda of high wage, high skill jobs. That is what we are focused on.
