| Obviously it’s disappointing not to win a seat in the London Euro election but getting 23,253 votes is a huge achievement for a new party with virtually no public awareness, no media coverage, and no money, resources or local party infrastructure. The sad fact is that for the majority of voters, the first time they would have been aware of the existence of the NHA Party was when they looked at their ballot paper For a brand new party like us, you have to realise that every one of those 23,253 votes had to be actively won. Now we need to build on this positive start, make people aware we exist, and ensure that the tens of thousands of Londoners who have publicly declared they are seriously concerned about the running down and selling off of our NHS grows to hundreds of thousands and then millions around the country. It’s taken Ukip twenty years to achieve their success. But we don’t have 20 years to save the NHS. We came 9th out of 17 parties, polling over 1% of the vote in a very crowded field in London, which is more than UKIP managed in its first Euro election back in 1994. And we actually managed to come 15th nationally in the Euro elections even though we stood only in London. Our local election candidates around the country also performed well, polling 20% more than the Lib Dems and 50% more than the Greens, and taking almost 20% of the Labour vote, gaining an impressive average of 6% of the total vote. In Liverpool Louise Boothroyd, caused a shock, emerging from nowhere to beat Tories, Lib Dems and Greens, coming second only to Labour. In Hammersmith and Fulham Dede Wilson beat all three Lib Dem candidates. In Rotherham, Naveen Judah’s votes were a decisive factor in pushing Labour into 3rd place. While in the Tory stronghold of Enfield Town, Kieran McGregor polled over a third of the number of votes of the winning Tory candidates. We have every reason to be encouraged and will continue our fight to save our NHS. We’ll take a good look at the lessons learnt from this campaign and welcome constructive comments from our supporters. Our priorities must be to increase public awareness of our existence, continue creating a network of local groups across the country and raise some serious money. We hope you can help us with all of these. Thank you for all your support. |