Well I didn’t win. However, I did manage to increase my vote share and scare the Conservatives. The final result in Lymington and Boldre was:

Barry Dunning – Conservatives – 2313 – 42%

Jack Davies – Liberal Democrats – 1241 – 23%

Jacqueline England – Independent – 1157 – 21%

Verena Jolly – Green Party – 453 – 8%

Jerry Weber – Labour Party – 332 – 6%

What the result has shown is just how much the presence of an Independent candidate splits the vote and maintains the status quo. That coupled with the surprise surge in support for the Green Party’s paper candidate from Fordingbridge demonstrates that there are a lot of people dissatisfied with how politics is conducted. It is a sentiment I agree with.

Politics shouldn’t be about Red vs Blue or Yellow vs Blue. Politics should be about grown-up debates concerning the issues which matter in our community and the country where we can disagree amicably while still putting forward a positive vision of what we want our area and country to look like in the years ahead.

I tried to focus on the positives during this election campaign. I didn’t want to spend all of my time talking about the negatives of the Conservative campaign because I think people want to vote for somebody who works for them rather than against somebody who doesn’t.

That is why I want to congratulate the Conservative candidate on his victory. My role going forward is to continue my hard work as a District and Town Councillor first and hold the Conservative to account for his election promises.

The Conservative County Councillor’s first big test will come with the plans for new parking charges on Lymington High Street. They were originally supposed to come in over a year ago but community opposition forced the Conservatives to delay making a decision until after the Local Elections. The Conservative candidate promised during the election campaign to make sure that the new parking charges were stopped. I hope that he keeps his word.

Our High Street businesses are really struggling. There are too many empty shops and there are not enough visitors to the town because of covid restrictions. Let’s hope the summer will bring with it lots of vacationing tourists who will all spend money in local shops and with local companies. New parking charges will hinder the pandemic recovery.

All in all, across the New Forest there was no change to the composition of County Councillors the New Forest sends to County Hall in Winchester. Our focus is now on the District Council elections in 2023 where the Liberal Democrats stand a good chance of taking control of the council from the Conservatives on new ward boundaries. It should be an interesting few years…

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