Vince Maple and George Perfect react to exit polls

Transcript

00:00Well here we go, a dramatic night already with much much more to come and there

00:05are echoes of a similar night one year ago when the Labour and Co-operative

00:09Group won control of Medway Council for the first time. The new council leader

00:14Vince Maple promised change but had little money to deliver it. Meanwhile the

00:19defeated Conservatives started life in opposition with the search for a new

00:23leader. Will history repeat itself tonight? Well Councillor Maple is here

00:28with me now alongside the leader of Medway Conservatives George Perfect.

00:32Welcome to you both and of course we're going to start talking about this exit

00:37poll. Vince, all the talk leading up to this was about a supermajority for

00:43Keir Starmer, is that what we're seeing here? Well the word supermajority is not

00:47anything we've ever really used in UK politics. It's a US politics thing. Look

00:52polls have been wrong before, this is only a poll. I was going to say there's

00:58not many any votes counted yet, there probably haven't in Kent, there might

01:01have been in Sunderland because they're going very very quickly. So we'll see

01:06what the final results are but if those exit polls are accurate that's a

01:10phenomenal night for the Labour Party and a very very clear message that this

01:14country has chosen change. And here in Kent we've seen those those figures

01:18overall there if the 410 for Labour. In Kent they're saying that that will shake

01:22down to 11 Labour seats, 7 Conservative seats. How do you interpret that

01:27result for Kent? Well we will see, I mean there's a number of seats which have

01:31hefty Conservative majorities. The three seats here in Medway all had over 15,000

01:37majorities. So going into this election it was going to be difficult for us. If

01:41those numbers are accurate as well, again that shows pretty seismically in Kent

01:46that there's a desire for change. Some of which we saw at last year's local

01:50elections in places like Medway and Dover and Thanet, but actually had

01:55potentially in other places that haven't necessarily had Labour councillors in

01:58the past. The council win is often a good indication that people want change in

02:02that community. George, I suppose the inverse of a super majority is a super

02:07minority isn't it? There was a lot of talk of the Conservatives being pushed

02:10into third place, of really disastrous numbers. How do you interpret what we can

02:14see here so far? Well I mean look, firstly we haven't had any, as Vince has just

02:18referenced, any votes counted yet and we've got to wait for the night to

02:21really start to see some of those seats being counted. But look, those numbers

02:26point to tonight being a very difficult evening for Conservatives up and

02:31down the country. I think we've had one of the most difficult parliaments since

02:35the Second World War over the last five years, since 2019.

02:42But look, as the exit poll shows, it's going to be a very difficult night.

02:47But this isn't of course the first time we've known that it's going to be

02:51difficult. We've seen through the local election results, as Vince referenced,

02:54challenging results over the past 48 months. The Prime Minister has been

02:59working hard in trying to win back the support from the public. But as I say,

03:04we'll have to wait to see what the full result is. But it looks like it's

03:06going to be a difficult night for Conservatives.