Adam Brown speaks after losing his seat in WNC elections

Northampton Chronicle

Conservative leader Adam Brown speaks after losing his seat in WNC elections

Transcript

00:00So how are you feeling having lost your seat by just two votes?

00:04Severely disappointed. It's a ward that I've served for eight years, actually part of the

00:09new Campion ward. I served previously, it's where I went to school, it's where my family are from,

00:13floor. So there's a lot of emotional ties for me to that ward. So to have to relinquish it

00:20for the time being at least is really, really tough. And I think the fact that it's two votes

00:25makes it even more difficult. 200 you could kind of take, but in first-past-the-post politics too

00:32is as good as 200. So I respect the decision of the voters. Clearly they weren't buying what we

00:39were selling in this election. And yeah, we've got to regroup as a party, have a proper deep dive

00:45and an analysis of where we went wrong nationally and locally, and get better and improve for the

00:53next time around. And what factors do you feel like might have contributed to this outcome for

00:57yourself, but as we're seeing inside at the moment of the way things are going across West

01:01Longhamptonshire? Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I couldn't lay my finger on precisely what went

01:05wrong for me personally in the ward. You know, Phil was a hundred votes or so ahead of me, Phil Bignall.

01:14But maybe there was a bit of an anti-leader thing going on, you know, maybe, you know, one of the

01:19candidates with a local address on the paper, you know, just took, you know, those critical

01:24few votes away from me. But as I say, you can drive yourself mad thinking about these things

01:29when it's two votes. And if you look across the piece, then it's largely national pictures. The

01:34frustrations that we were hearing on the doorstep were about the record of, you know, the previous

01:39Conservative government and lots of concerns about immigration, you know, things that actually the

01:45council can't control directly. And when we were able to have the conversations with people and

01:50refocus their minds on local matters, then they tended to come round to us. So, because I think

01:54they saw Phil and I as good local champions, people who cared about the area and reform weren't even

02:00running a campaign in any sense of the word in the Campion ward. So they've come from nowhere without

02:07delivering really any leaflets in the ward or campaigning and taking it, but that's how it is.

02:12So in terms of your specific seat and also West Northamptonshire as a whole,

02:17do you feel like that is as a result of the national picture as opposed to the performance

02:21of West Northamptonshire Council over the past four years?

02:24You know, as Conservatives, we've been in power for a long time in Northamptonshire.

02:29It's natural that over that course of time, there'll be local frustrations mounting up as well as

02:34the national picture. But I think 2021 really was probably when we were at our most vulnerable

02:40locally in the aftermath of the County Council collapse and heading into the new unitary.

02:44The national picture at that time allowed us to overcome those local difficulties. But, you know,

02:50with the party in the doldrums nationally, there's just no hiding place. And, you know,

02:55I'm not going to pin this on the Jonathan Nunn scandal or anything else like it, but it is just the

03:01fact that when you're in administration in local government, you have a series of really tough

03:04choices to make. There isn't an awful lot of money to go and spend on filling potholes or anything

03:09like that. You just have to manage the money as best you can and hope that ultimately the electorate

03:15sees some value for it. And maybe they haven't this time around, but I fear that not a lot will change

03:21with the change of administration because they'll still have the same series of tough choices to

03:25make. They'll still have the same financial constraints that we were dealing with. But,

03:28you know, I do genuinely wish them well because, you know, I'm a resident, you know, I have my family

03:33here in West Northamptonshire and I hope that we've built the foundations for any new administration

03:39to prosper and do well on behalf of those residents because it's about them at the end of the day.

03:43What do you make of Reform? What do you actually make of them?

03:46They're very inexperienced. They've got a steep learning curve. They're a real mixture.

03:53They're almost like three separate parties sort of pushed into one. And it'll be interesting to

04:01observe their progress and their evolution as a group on the council. It's very, very different

04:07being in administration to being in opposition. You know, all of a sudden you're going to have to

04:11take decisions. You're going to have to take responsibility. You have to answer to good people

04:15like you and answer tough questions. And yeah, we'll see how they handle it.

04:19And looking back on your four years as the ruling party and then later as the leader, how would you

04:26kind of, yeah, how would you, what do you make of it? How well do you feel like you did?

04:33I did my very best, you know, and that's all anyone can do. You know, I cared about my ward,

04:38I cared about West Northamptonshire. You know, I think we have undeniably balanced the books over

04:43the four years, which is, you know, one of the biggest challenges in local government. We've tried to

04:47improve services wherever we can, where problems have arisen, whether it's in Send or, you know,

04:53other parts of children's services. And we've shown progress in our Ofsted ratings in every part of

04:58children's services, apart from Send. We're getting hundreds of millions of pounds of private sector

05:03investment into Northampton. We've got a Rugby World Cup coming to Northampton, which was, you know,

05:09as a result of a decision, you know, I made, obviously, it's probably part in that, you know,

05:12I don't take all the credit for it. But, you know, I championed that within the council,

05:16and it needed local authority support to get it here. And so, over the next four years,

05:20I think it's going to be an exciting time for Northampton and West Northamptonshire. And,

05:24yeah, you know, I lament the fact that I'm not going to be around as a councillor to sort of

05:30see the fruits of my labour, if you like. Are you kind of surprised at the result,

05:33when you're surprised to lose your seat? Yeah, yeah, I am. Because the canvassing data that I was

05:38getting did not show that level of support for reform. And, you know, if you look historically,

05:44whether it's at Brexit, or whether it's at sort of general elections in the past,

05:48where the Conservatives had a surprise result, there is a habit of, you know, centre-right voters

05:53being a bit shy on the doorstep, being a bit coy about their voting intention. And maybe what we're

05:57seeing here is the shy reform voter phenomenon coming through, because they were a lot stronger

06:03than any of our projections or our canvassing data suggested.

06:05And, I mean, what's next for you? You know, are you staying with the party?

06:11Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm a Conservative. You know, I'm within the party,

06:16because, you know, I believe in Conservative principles. You know, I think about my political

06:22beliefs and, you know, whether the party's the right place for me, but there's no other home for me in

06:26British politics. You know, reform is a populist party, it's not a Conservative party.

06:29I'm not a Liberal Democrat. I'm not, you know, I'm not a Socialist. So, you know, the Conservative

06:35Party's the only home for me, and I'll, you know, I'll take part in every local effort to try and

06:39rebuild and allow us to come back stronger. And who knows, if there's a by-election, maybe I'll be

06:44putting my hand up for that. And just lastly, obviously, last year in the general election,

06:50we saw the Conservatives take quite a few losses, mainly because of the votes between reform. You know,

06:56today we've seen a lot.

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