Jessica Morden re-elected in Newport East after voters ‘wanted something to hope for’

Jessica Morden believes voters who are “sick and tired of 14 years of the chaos of the Tories” have thrown their weight behind Labour’s general election campaign.

Ms Morden won 42% of the vote to retain her Newport East seat on a night Labour is on course to secure a landslide victory and an impressive House of Commons majority – a remarkable turnaround given the party’s electoral woes in 2019.

During the Newport East campaign, Ms Morden said she met people who “wanted something different – they wanted change, they wanted something to hope for”.

With results still pouring in nationally, Ms Morden said she had tried to shut out the noise around the exit poll and only focus on what was happening at her own count, at the city’s velodrome.

But once the Newport East results were declared, and after snapping a quick selfie with her beaming team, she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service it felt “wonderful” to win again in the constituency she has represented since 2005.

“It’s a real privilege to be elected to be an MP, and I just feel really humble that people put their faith in [me],” she said.

For the first time since 2010, there will be a Labour government in Westminster and a Welsh Labour government in the Senedd, and Ms Morden says this can deliver a better “level of co-operation between the two institutions”.

But there is a lot of work to do nationally, Ms Morden acknowledged, adding Keir Starmer’s new UK government will have “a really big job ahead of us… to get people’s faith back in politics”.

“In this election we only promised what we said we could afford to do,” she said. “But if we stabilise the economy, we can hopefully do more.”

A tough night for the Conservatives nationally was replicated in Newport East, where the party slipped to third place behind Reform UK.

Tory candidate Rachel Buckler said her party “will rebuild” after a “very difficult night” and losing “a great number of extremely good MPs”.

The full results for Newport East are:

Pippa Bartolotti (independent): 1,802

Rachel Buckler (Conservative): 6,487

Jonathan Clark (Plaid): 2,239

Mike Ford (Heritage): 135

Lauren James (Green): 2,092

John Miller (Lib Dem): 2,045

Jessica Morden (Labour): 16,370

Tommy Short (Reform): 7,361