General Election 2019: Shrewsbury & Atcham - Daniel Kawczynski ‘honoured’ after winning constituency for fifth time

Results:

• Daniel Kawczynski, Conservative* - 31,021

• Julia Buckley, Labour - 19,804

• Nat Green, Lib Dems - 5,906

• Julian Dean, Green - 1,762

• Hannah Locke, Independent - 572

• Turnout - 72.1 per cent

The MP called his re-election for the fifth time “an enormous honour”.

“I now want to get on with improvements for Shrewsbury, from Future Fit to the North West Relief Road,” he added.

In his acceptance speech Mr Kawczynski paid tribute to one of his adversaries, 18-year-old Hannah Locke, who ran as an independent candidate.

“I wish her every success in the future and I very much hope to see her one day also in the House of Commons,” he said.

Dr Julia Buckley, the Labour candidate, said the party had fared better in Shrewsbury than it had nationally.

“I was a late candidate and all in all I think we did really well,” she said. “I had a team of about 120 people who worked so hard in Shrewsbury – they excelled themselves.”

Defining

Lib Dem candidate Nat Green said local issues had been drowned out by the national picture.

“Jeremy Corbyn has been the defining person of this election,” he said.

“Here in Shrewsbury we ran a robust campaign and we managed to resist the squeeze of the Conservative and Labour votes. The local party worked very, very hard to get across our message but we were drowned out by the national picture.” There was a similar message from Julian Dean the Green party candidate – and also a Shropshire councillor – after results came out.

“We lost out to the tactical voting that happens in a first past the post system,” he said.

“Brexit has dominated this election and tragically we will not get the desperately needed changes to save our planet from this Conservative government.”

Hannah Locke thanked her voters and said that the experience of standing as a candidate had been an incredible one.