Conservative candidate for Northampton South, Andrew Lewer speaks out
Conservative candidate for Northampton South, Andrew Lewer speaks on how he never takes an election for granted
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00:00Well, I don't know about Tory HQ. I know about the feeling of people locally which is that we feel like we've done everything we can under a less than promising national background.
00:11You know, I've had teams out, we've spoken to a lot of people and we'll know fairly soon whether that's had any effect.
00:20What's the mood been like on the doorstep? I've heard quite a few Conservative voters haven't decided to vote this year.
00:26Yeah, I mean I think I've certainly encountered a larger number of undecideds and won't votes than I've probably ever had before.
00:36That was tightening up a little bit towards the end, as you'd expect. It's obviously a bit difficult to be undecided on the day, but even so, a lot of undecideds.
00:48We will see whether undecided means too polite to say they're voting for someone else or taking their time over deciding to come our way, having felt unhappy about the national seat, which I would more than understand.
01:00Are you confident with your seat tonight?
01:02Never confident about a result. This is my tenth election in various capacities and various people come to me and say it's looking like this or it's looking like that and I just wait and see.
01:14What would be your first priority for Northampton South if you were to win your seat tonight?
01:19The priority, which it has been for a couple of years now, has been an urgent treatment centre to fit into the suite of improvements that we've seen at Northampton General over the last three or four years.
01:32Children's A&E, new main A&E, some private money that I've been able to help secure for Maggie's Cancer Care Centre, which ought to be getting built in the next few months and hopefully open late this year or early next.
01:47And that urgent treatment centre will be the last piece of the jigsaw for a full suite of health improvements there.
01:53So that's the thing I'd really like to see and feel like we were getting fairly close and I think if the election had been in November when we all expected it to be rather than now, we might have actually got there.
02:05I'd certainly keep on with that if I'm granted the opportunity.
02:08The turnout for tonight for Northampton South was 62%. Some are saying that's quite low. Is that surprising to you?
02:16Well I don't think it's surprising in the context of low turnouts nationally. I mean some of the early results from the North East were showing turnouts of only just over 50%.
02:26So in that context it's higher but it doesn't surprise me entirely with the general mood of voter turnouts that we've had this time.