Labour have swept to victory in the general election.
Sir Keir Starmer is the country's new Prime Minister after going to meet the King following the official resignation of Rishi Sunak.
Labour claimed more than 400 seats across the country with the Tories suffering their worst results in history.
In Kent, the political picture is very different with Labour and the Lib Dems taking seats previously held by the Conservatives.
There are now 11 Labour MPs in the county. The Tories have six representatives while the Liberal Democrats won Tunbridge Wells.
Hear from our reporters at counts across the county - and from those who've been elected to represent Kent in parliament.
We've got some other news in brief and Sam Lawrie takes a look at what's going on in Kent this weekend.
10 on line news. News you can trust. This is the Kent online podcast. Nicola Everett. Hello. Hope you're okay. Thanks ever so much for downloading today's podcast on Friday, July the 5th, the day Labour won a landslide victory in the general election. Secure Starmer is the country's new prime minister after they took more than 400 out of 650 seats across the UK where the political picture in Kent is very, very different today. The county now has 11 Labour MPs. The Conservatives held on to just five seats while one went to the Liberal Democrats, where we had reporters at every count in Kent overnight. So let's take a tour of the county. This is Keeley Greenwood at the Dartford count where Labour has been elected. Jim Dixon won 15,392 votes just beating Gareth Johnson, the former Conservative MP for the area with 14,200. Lee Strandas from Reform UK did well with 9,523, although he was slightly disappointed he didn't get the 10,000 he was hoping for. The Gareth Johnson left very unhappy after serving for 14 years in the constituency. And Jim Dixon has been telling us about the big issues that need tackling in his constituency. The NHS, the state of police and safety on the streets, the fact that housing being built in the area needs proper infrastructure and Dart for being gridlock and all those are things I plan to go in at a very early opportunity and try to get change. This Alex language at the Graysham count where Labour's current late Lauren Sullivan has been elected as the new MP with 16,623 votes. She de-seated Conservative Adam Holloway who has been the borough's MP for the last 19 years who gained just 13,911 votes. He was followed by the Reform Party candidate, then the Green Party candidate and then the Liberal Democrats candidate. So Labour's Lauren Sullivan has won that seat in Gravesham. She had this message for residents. Next, we head to Medway. Robert Boddy was there and all three seats went to Labour. At first it seemed like the races would almost certainly go to recounts with the mood amongst Labour supporters being fairly subdued despite the very positive exit poll. Beyond some short appearances by Raymond Chishti, the candidates for Labour and Conservative stayed away from the count until the very last moment. Definitely involved in the loss for the Tories was the role of Reform UK which healthily placed third in all three seats, only a couple of thousands behind second place. There was a long, long wait but all of a sudden just after 4am all results came in quick succession and it was all over by the shouting. Kelly Torehurst and Raymond Chishti were careful not to place blame at the pre-to the Prime Minister directly, but you didn't have to read very far between the lines to see Rishu Sinak won't be very popular in their households. Chishti said the Prime Minister hadn't listened to his MPs enough, but neither of them gave an indication of who they would support to take over as leader. Lauren Edwards, Tristan Osborne and Nashaba Khan were all obviously elated with the result but were quickly whisked away before returning to answer journalist's questions with party lines in hand. The NHS, education, policing and housing were among the priorities they said they were focused on for their new seats. It's all changed in Medway. Let's hear from all of those new Labour MPs, first Lauren Edwards who's going to represent Rochester and Strewd. It feels overwhelming but I'm ready to crack on. We've got a really strong mandate for a Labour government. I'm really excited about the programme that we can deliver. I want to get as much investment in growth as I can here in Rochester and Strewd. Really deliver for the people and I'm just really keen to start work. Tristan Osborne is the new MP for Chatham and Ailesford. I stand in the shadow of giants. I hope that I can play my part in that long journey of MPs that we've had. I've got my agenda and I look forward to ensuring that families get the fair crack of the whip and that the community includes. Nashaba Khan has been elected in Gillingham and Reynan. If I'm honest, it does feel a little bit surreal but also pretty incredible. This is my hometown where I grew up. So the opportunity to represent it and actually make change in this community means so much to me and it's not a job that I'll take lightly. We're going to move to the middle of the county now and Conservative Helen Grant has been re-elected as MP for Maidstone and Moreling. She's told the Kent Online podcast that issues around house building will be one of her top priorities. We're going to be fighting from the world go to make sure we keep these green and special places so that our children and our grandchildren have them to enjoy. And we need these spaces for our physical and mental health. We're going to head into West Kent next. This is Karasimans at the Tumbridge Count where Tom Tugenhatt has been elected. It was quite a slow night but I can reveal that Tom has held on to his Conservative seat and he has done since 2015. This has been a very, very difficult night for the Conservative Party. It's clearly been one of those moments where we really do need to stop and rethink where we're going. It's the moment where we have failed to deliver and sadly we've obviously lost the trust and confidence in the British public. This is Ellie Hodgson at Tumbridge Wells constituency count where Mike Martin has been elected and the Liberal Democrats have won their first ever seat in the country. It's been a very eventful night here, surprisingly quiet and a lot of anticipation to begin with only two of the candidates actually attended. That was John Gager for Reform UK and the independent candidate Hasan Kasem who was there throughout the evening. At the very end for the result only five of the six candidates attended and only one of them was willing to do a post result interview. That was again John Gager for the Reform UK Party. In his victory speech Mr Martin described it as a political earthquake. Tumbridge Wells has had a Conservative member of Parliament for 114 years but no more and this earthquake epicenter Tumbridge Wells reverberates across the country. Or a trot held on to her seat in Seven Oaks for the Conservatives with this was the moment of the declaration. There was a surprise result in sitting born and sheppy MP Gordon Henderson had decided not to run but the Conservative candidate was still expected to win that seat. However it went to Kevin McKenna for Labour. It's been a massive win here compared to where Labour were in relation to the Conservatives in 2019 and actually the previous election. This is quite a big turnaround and my job over the next few years is to show people that actually were right to put their face in me. Let's hear next from our reporter James Palant. After weeks of campaigning a day of voting and six hours of ballot counting the race encounter be culminated in a win for a Labour candidate Rosie Duffield. The incumbent cruised to a third consecutive term in office beating her closest rival Conservative Louise Harvey Quirk by 8,659 votes. Exit polls had strongly suggested a Labour win in the constituency and when the contest was finally called at 4.18am on Friday, Ms Duffield graciously accepted the victory thanking her fellow candidates for a clean campaign and vowing to work as hard as ever for the people of Canterbury. The Conservative party picked up a decades low 22.9% of ballots cast with candidate Louise Harvey Quirk finishing second. In a surprise twist reform party candidate Bridget Porter secured an impressive third place finish with 6,805 votes. With Ms Porter adding she was chuffed to bits. After Ms Porter came the Greens, Henry Stanton followed by a Liberal Democrat Russ Timson and Fifth and SDPs Luke Buchanan-Hodgeman coming last. And this is what Rosie Duffield had to say to us. I think a lot of people just have this sort of generic anger and they don't like the idea of the establishment. It doesn't necessarily mean anything much but that's where they dump their votes sometimes. If they want to be feeling like their empty establishment and it's up to the rest of us the main party is to really look at that and listen to people and see why they're doing this. Our political editor Paul Francis has been revealing that there was one result in particular that shocked him. For me the big surprise was Damian Green in Ashford who lost out. Again that was one that was that was predicted. It was but I felt that he might be able to swing it around to his way because of his personal standing and I think what did for him was the boundary changes which saw him lose a lot of the villages and he had the rural stuff and he took in his constituents he now embraces Stanhope the big housing estate and I think he paid the price for that. As you can hear more reaction and analysis from Paul Simon Finley, Robert Bodie and Dan Essen are local democracy reporters on the Kent Politics podcast election special just search for wherever you normally get your pods. Thanks to Essen has been at the count for Favisham and mid Kent. Helen Waitley has been re-elected after what was turned out to be a very long night for her. She's seen her majority obliterated but still manages to cling on to little more than a thousand. It's been a good night for the Green party who finished fourth, a bad night for the Lib Dems who finished fifth and in sixth place Lawrence Rustom, a British Democrat, secured 171 votes, one less than the number of spoiled ballots. Well Helen Waitley thinks there was one key issue for a lot of voters this time around. One of the big issues that came up from people who chose to vote reform rather than conservative was clearly immigration. That was something significant at the election and people who told me they basically wanted to vote for fraud. I don't think that reform has the right answer that I don't think they have a plan. This is Simon Finley and I've been reporting from the New World of Kent constituency where the Conservatives took it with one of the biggest majorities in the county. Katie Lam pulled more than 20,000 votes with Labour's Lenny Rawls coming in second, nearly eight and a half thousand behind as expected reform UK pulled well, picking up more than 10,000 votes. It was one of the higher turnouts with 67% of voters going to the polls. Katie Lam's been telling us about her priorities. It remains to be seen what the focus is of the new government will be and holding them to account and particularly within that I think standing up for the countryside and for rural values will probably be the single most important thing that it will be my responsibility today. Local Democracy reporter Dan Essen spent the night on the coast. So I've just gotten back from the count for the 2024 general election in the Dover and Deal constituency. It was a very long night indeed. The final result for Dover didn't come in till only moments before 5am in the morning and polls closed at 10pm the previous night. But essentially as predicted it was a pretty crushing Labour victory. Mike tapped Labour parties candidate won 18,900 votes. But the Conservatives who won the seat in 2019 won the Nathalie Elite. Their candidate this time round Stephen James won not much more than 10,000 votes and was pushed into third place by the Reform Party's Howard Cox which is quite an upset for the Conservatives given that last time in 2019 they won this seat with 12,000, a majority of 12,000 when Nathalie Elite stood for it. So it wasn't an entirely surprising result but the Labour Party's man in Dover Mike Tap said he said he was extremely proud and he's been the candidate for Dover and Deal for more than two years now. So the Labour Party obviously very, very much valued this seat and they've put a lot of time and resources into the seat over the past couple of years and that's clearly paid off for them. And when I asked Mike Tap you know why did he win such a large amount and why did Labour Party win such a big land? So I decided that they fought a hard campaign and he laid the responsibility at Keir Starmer's feet. He said Keir Starmer has changed the Labour Party and now he intends to change the country. It's Keir Starmer, he's changed the Labour Party and that's really exciting to come back from one of the biggest losses in 1945. Keir Starmer will govern as a change the party and I'm really excited to be a part of that. We're going to stay on the coast and Polly Billington is a new Labour MP for East Fannet she's looking forward to representing the area in Parliament. It's one of the most delightful parts of the country and being surrounded on three sides by sea, one of my big priorities as well will be campaigning to clean up our sewage scandal and make sure that we can hold their water industries to account. Conservative Sir Roger Gail has been re-elected as MP for Herm Bay and Sandwich. That was a new constituency that was created this time around. He's been in Parliament since 1983. We shall come back up again, Bill. I've got a job of work to do and I think as inevitably one of the senior members of the House, our job is going to have to be to try to make this work in the interests of everybody across the country. And finally Tony Vaughn is the new Labour MP for Folkston and Tyth and he's been telling us why he thinks people voted for him. The cost of living and mortgages going up, people can't get a dentist, people can't get a doctor's appointment. There are so many issues where people are sick to death and the way things are and I think it's got to the point where things have got so bad that people are like we have to change this. Now throughout the election campaign we've been hearing from a first-time voter on how he feels about the whole process. Luca Vasullo is an 18-year-old from Canterbury and he got to cast his vote for the very first time yesterday. I've been getting his reaction. It was absolutely amazing to wake up in the morning, got straight out there to my polling station, walked right in, put my cross in that box, popped it in the box and it was just that great feeling of going this time. I had a say. It was amazing. And how busy was it when you went to your polling station? I had to queue for almost an hour to cast my vote yesterday. It seemed to be that a lot of people were turning up to vote. They were about quarter past eight and it wasn't too busy at that point but I did have to wait for a little bit but I did go and speak to some of the polling staff and they said to me that at seven o'clock in the morning they had a queue right out the door loads of people raring to go. We were chatting last time. You still weren't quite sure whether you would vote with your head at your heart. Are you able to tell us or do you want to tell us what you decided in the end? And was it a decision literally as you walked into the polling station? It wasn't even as I walked into the polling station. It was as I was stood there with a pencil in my hand. In the end, I went for the tactical vote. I think looking at the map across Kent now, I think it's very clear what that probably was. But looking at the results afterwards, it was really heartening to see that obviously the Green Party and the Lib Dems did get a nice share of the vote. Obviously not enough for it to have won for them but it was a good share and a good showing for them. And generally, how are you feeling today with the political landscape of Kent significantly changed obviously the country significantly changed? What are your thoughts? It's brilliant. I mean, we're now sitting somewhere where we're in another step towards the future. I think for so many years, politics has been so disheartening because it's just been, okay, it's conservative government after conservative government. We can now look to the future. We've got labour in. How they'll do is still to be seen. That's a big part of an election is that they still have to prove themselves. But we're now at a point where we can move forward into the future and see what happens to our political system. Finally, former Kent MP Craig McKinley is said to be given a life peerage by the king. The conservative who represented South Planet decided not to defend his seat following a battle with sepsis, which saw him lose his hands and feet. He's among six Tories to receive peerages in a dissolution honours list. While you can reach plenty of analysis, you can find out who's been elected, where you live and learn about Kent's new MPs at kentonline.co.uk. Kent Online News. We've got some other news in brief now and campaigners according for all building work to stop at an abandoned housing estate on Romley Marsh. 85 homes are being built on the land between the A259 and the Seekfront at St Mary's Bay. Kent was previously delayed and now residents claim the £20m development doesn't comply with planning permission. The company has been contacted for a response. Bosses at a private members club in Tumbred Wells have been given permission to open for longer. Club Quantum is opposite the Pantales and within a block of more than 120 flats. It was initially allowed to open six days a week but can now welcome guests on Sundays too. And one for drivers, part of the A249 is going to be closed overnight this weekend for final prep work to open the new stock brief flyover. The bridge is a key part of the junction of the M2 near sitting born which has been completely redesigned to ease congestion. The road will be shut northbound from 8pm to 5am tonight, tomorrow and Sunday with a diversion via the M2 and the medway towns. Kent Online Reports. And now with the round up of everything going on in Kent, this weekend is Sam Laurie. There's a busy weekend ahead for those of us in Kent as one of the area's biggest summer events kicks off today. The Kent County Show, a huge three-day celebration of farming and agriculture, opened today and it will welcome thousands of visitors over the next couple of days. As always, there's tons going on at this year's show which is at the Kent Show Ground in Detling near Mainstone until Sunday. There's show jumping competitions, dog agility courses, dancing sheep, equestrian displays, tractors and vintage vehicles, a food village, flower displays and craft and gift stores. Families can also get involved in outdoor activities such as archery and clay pigeon shooting or hop on the fairground rides with the kids. There are still tickets available on the door and shuttle buses are running from Mainstone directly to the show ground over the weekend. Of course, the show is a pretty big deal in Kent calendar but it's not the only thing going on this weekend. Jack Severetti, JLS and the Kaiser Chiefs will all be at Dreamland this weekend as the latest list of artists performing at the Margate Summer Series. While in Dartford, the town's Pride celebration takes place with music from Pussycat Doll, Kimberly Wyatt on Saturday. There's also some great eats at Foodies Festival which makes it's debut at Dunallum Park in Tumbridge Wells from today until Sunday and the medieval pageant will be marching through Canterbury on Saturday with Kings, Queens, Pilgrims, Knights and Giants all taking to the streets in a colourful parade. That's just about all we can squeeze in this week but as the summer goes on we'll be back with plenty more things to see and do in Kent. Well that's all from us for today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and threads. You can also get details on the top stories direct to your email each morning via the briefing to sign up to that just head to kentonline.co.uk. Don't forget whilst you're on the site today you can check out the latest review from our secret drinker, whatever you're up to. Hope you have a fantastic weekend and we'll be back with the podcast on Monday. (dramatic music)
