Francois “Difficult night”

IN a night that saw many Conservative MPs lose their seats, the Rayleigh and Wickford MP managed to cling on to power with a small majority, and the smallest number of votes sine the seat was created in 2010.

Mark Francois retained his Tory seat during July’s general election, despite a crushing defeat nationally for the party.

Whilst securing first place, his Tory stronghold of Rayleigh and Wickford was considerably dented by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, who swept up a sizable chunk of votes across South Essex.

After voters went to the polls on Thursday, the long-standing MP Mr Francois went from 72.6% of the votes in 2019 to just 37%.

Winning by 17,756 votes, Mr Francois was followed by Reform UK’s Grant Randall who received 12,135 votes, reaching second place by a mere 312 votes after Labour’ James Hedges received 11,823.

After the result, Mr Randall commented: “Well, what an exciting six weeks.

“Many months ago, Ben Habib was quoted saying that I was to “obliterate the Conservative party “and I think we can safely say we did.

“In the run-up to this election I was described as a ‘paper candidate.’

“Well, I didn’t do too badly as a paper candidate, did I? I have worked full time throughout this election and have 100% self-funded every aspect of this campaign.

“In the last election the Tories won by an astonishing 31,000 vote majority, last night it was 5000.”

Speaking after the result were announced, Mr Francois, who has been the MP since 2001, commented: “Thursday was clearly a very difficult night for the Conservative party.

“However, I would like to think my constituents for re-electing me to represent them and my hard-working campaign team for helping to make that possible.

“I’m taking the weekend off to recuperate – and then I’ll be back to Westminster next week to get on with the job.”

The Lib Dems candidate Stewart Mott received 4,068, followed in fifth by the Green’s Chris Taylor with 2,196 votes.

Picture: Rayleigh and Wickford candidates. Pic Mark Francois.

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