Nigel Huddleston admitted the Conservative Party faces significant challenges after losing over 650 local council seats. He stressed the party's ongoing renewal process, aiming to return to core Conservative values. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, clearly the two main parties are being squeezed. We have been for some time, both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.
00:07We've actually had multi-party government for quite a long period of time in the UK.
00:11But it's certainly our role to get as many people back to us, the Conservative Party, who share our values and our principles.
00:18Many of those have gone to reform and other parties, but that's precisely why we're renewing our party,
00:23in order to make sure that everybody knows what we believe in and make sure that we can deliver on those values and principles.
00:29It will take time to renew. Kemi said that when she was elected leader.
00:32And of course, these elections are incredibly disappointing, but not completely surprising,
00:37because the mood of the British public, and we do understand they're still frustrated with us.
00:41We're learning from our mistakes. We got a real battering at last year's general election.
00:45And this time as well, there was still a mood of people not feeling like they could put their trust in us yet.
00:51But it will come.
00:52Well, these elections were always going to be difficult because they're on a four year cycle based on the 2021 high,
00:57where we achieved an incredible 65% of all seats.
01:01No party had ever done that before.
01:03So we were going from a really high watermark versus a really low watermark of last year's general election,
01:08when we lost two thirds of MPs.
01:11And because the process of renewal of the party will take time, it's not like we could suddenly recover overnight.
01:16So we always knew this was going to be difficult. But we did win seats.
01:20We won Peterborough from Labour because we are also holding this disastrous Labour government to account.
01:25We're the ones doing that. Lib Dems reform virtually nowhere to be seen.
01:29We're the ones doing that. So we've held Labour to account in Parliament and also making sure that across the country,
01:34people know that they cannot put their trust in Labour. That's a responsibility we have as His Majesty's opposition.
01:40But we also still have 4,000 councillors across the UK and of course, 121 MPs.
01:46So very clearly, transparently, we are the party of opposition in Parliament and still have a strong presence in local government.
01:53Not as strong as we would like, but this is where we fight back.
01:56We fight back.