ON July 4th history was made in Basingstoke with our first Labour MP elected.
I would like to congratulate Luke Murphy and the army of volunteers who helped him get there.

The result was seismic, with nearly 21,000 votes, being the 4th highest Labour vote in the South East and our highest Labour parliamentary vote in Basingstoke since 1997. The majority at nearly 6,500 shows that the vote was decisive, exceeding the number of votes cast for the Conservatives and Reform combined.

The people of Basingstoke have voted for change, and change is needed. In the coming weeks and months, I hope that the local media, and Gazette in particular, will help promote the positive aspects of our great town and our great country, and the great challenges before us.

READ MORE: History is made as Labour win Basingstoke seat for the first time

These great challenges are local: reviving the town centre, the ice rink, helping the football club, to name but three.

There are also great national challenges in modernising and decarbonising our economy, creating new jobs, improving our environment (especially our rivers), improving our services and utilities, and meeting the growing challenges at home and abroad which present a threat to our great town and our great country.

In Ukraine and the Middle East, local war and growing tensions mean we will have to increase our armed forces. And at home, recent events with riots and those who attempt to justify them are particularly disturbing. The comments about “two tier policing” by our police and crime commissioner are reprehensible, and by criticising the very police she is responsible for, she undermines her own position.

There have also been comments, locally and nationally, about the “loveless landslide” and trying to draw the focus towards immigration through rioting. The election result was a 30-year event, and in Basingstoke a 100-year event. The people have spoken. The election was not about immigration. To ignore those who voted for change or try to make out that the result is somehow diminished or invalid is to disrespect those who voted and democracy itself.

Britain has always been a welcoming country, we have had many waves of immigration going back hundreds of years. Basingstoke has always been a welcoming town, which trebled in size 50 years ago with the London overspill and has doubled in size in the intervening years to the present day.

My grandad Arthur Attwood MBE used to write for the Gazette and he got a Freedom of the Borough and an MBE for his services. If he were still alive now, he would be really pleased to see a Labour MP, but utterly horrified by the scenes on our streets (as nearby as Aldershot) reminiscent of 1930’s Germany.

Cllr Andrew McCormick

Labour and Co-Operative Party

Basingstoke and Deane Borough councillor, Brighton Hill ward

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