The fight is on for one of the most marginal seats in the UK

Today marks the official launch of the 2019 General Election campaign and in the coming weeks we hope to bring you a genuinely balanced overview of what all the main parties are saying and what each of the candidates fighting to become OUR next Member of Parliament think they can do for OUR town.

What we already know is that Peter Chowney will once again contest the seat for Labour, he fell just 346 votes short in 2017 and Labour are determined to make the Hastings and Rye constituency theirs once again. Also standing will be Nick Perry for the Liberal Democrats. He has contested the seat on three previous occasions but believes his party has the wind in its sails and victory is within his grasp.

We’re still waiting for the local party to announce who will be the Conservative candidate and expect that announcement anytime.

Next week Hastings In Focus will be sitting down with the candidates from each of the three main parties to hear why they believe they are most deserving of your vote. Those interviews will be available on our Soundcloud Channel and will form part of the next edition of The Hastings Podcast. At the same time we want to get out on the streets and hear from you what you think the main issues facing Hastings are and what you want from a local MP.

Click on this link to hear episode 1 of The Hastings Podcast

Feel free to email us at tellmeyourstory@hastingsinfocus.co.uk or get in touch through our social media, just search for ‘Hastings In Focus’ on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram

So just how marginal is the Hastings and Rye parliamentary seat, here are how the votes fell in the last two General Elections…

Hastings and Rye 
Has been held by the now Independent, former Conservative, Amber Rudd. One-time home secretary and work and pensions secretary.
Who thinks they can win it? Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats

2017 result:

  • Conservatives – 25,668
  • Labour – 25,322
  • Lib Dems – 1,885
  • UKIP – 1,479
  • Ind – 412
  • Majority: 346
    Brexit referendum result: leave 55%

2015 result

  • Conservative – 22,686
  • Labour – 17,890
  • UKIP – 6,786
  • Green – 1,951
  • Lib Dems – 1,614
  • Majority: 4,796

Expect big efforts by all the parties to persuade you to vote for them. For politics lovers it’s going to be an exciting five weeks, for the rest of us, it might not!

 

One thought on “The fight is on for one of the most marginal seats in the UK

  1. It doesn’t really matter not who wins or loses here – nobody seems to genuinely care for this town…at least Amber Rudd put in many appearances boosting the towns morale…and she was a very presentable MP always replying to her constituents emails and letters and face to face ….many did not like her simply because she was a Tory and they gave her a hard time with insults and worse..but how about having. a look at past behaviour by the other parties down here…have they done better? Will the current known candiates do better?
    Think about it…at the moment it does look as if we are running up huge debts with vague and nebulous commercial investments, huge payments for feasibility studies, crazy plans to put solar panels on our treasured Country Park when there are other far more acceptable options…and what about all that wasted money on refurbishing the White Rock area? Now what is that all about…a fountain where we can get ‘misted’ in the hot weather….for heavens sake.
    What this town needs is affordable housing and prospects of employment and yet all we see are developers getting ‘away with it’ whacking up huge developments and the affordable part of it disappearing from view. Show me some developments which really are affordable. And not built on flood plains which is the current proposal for the site at Bulverhythe. And the old bathing pool site – what goes on there then? Full public consultation promised and yet the lease for the developer is due to be signed without any public consultation…another white elephant and the opportunity to preserve and enhance the one remainingsea front green site in this area probably lost forever. Shouldn’t the Foreshore Trust have something to say about this site? Aren’t they the Trustees for our foreshore?
    Candidates need to earn our respect for the the big cross on 12 December – who deserves this in Hastings & Rye?

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