Peter Lamb has been elected Crawley’s new MP.
There were cheers from the Labour faithful as the announcement was made by Returning Officer Ian Duke at K2 Leisure Centre, shortly after 6.40am.
Eight candidates vied for the position following the departure of Henry Smith, who chose not to re-stand after 14 years in the hot seat.
Mr Lamb said there were ‘enormous challenges in town’ and he had a page of A4 notes laying out his immediate priorities.
He added:
“There’s a lot of stuff that just hasn’t been dealt with – and I made promises to people.
“Yes, I’m happy but it is daunting to have that level of faith put in you. And I really, really want to make sure that the people can look back and say ‘we made the right call’.”
In 2019, the Tories held Crawley with a majority of 8,360.
Mr Lamb wiped that out and came away with 17,453 compared with 12,218 for Tory candidate Zack Ali.
Crawley’s result was the last to be announced in West Sussex after delays with the scanning of some postal votes meant a number of ballot boxes arrived later than planned.
The results in full were:
Zack Ali (Con) – 12,218
Linda Bamieh (Workers Party for Britain) – 2,407
Robin Burnham (Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition) – 153
Tim Charters (Reform) – 8,447
Iain Dickson (Green) – 2,621
Lee Gibbs (Lib Dem) – 2,205
Peter Lamb (Lab) – 17,453
Dan Weir (Heritage) – 138
The turnout was 60.65%.
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