LABOUR retained Newport West in the Senedd election – with Jayne Bryant ensuring Labour’s stronghold on the seat will continue.

Ms Bryant retained the seat for Labour with 14,259 votes, despite strong opposition from Conservative Michael Enea, who came in second with 10,353.

 

 

Ms Bryant’s share of the vote is an increase of almost 4.5 per cent in her vote share since 2016.

Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan Clark achieved 2,076 votes, coming in third. Amelia Womack of the Greens came fourth with 1,314.

John Miller of the Liberal Democrats got 882 votes, Kevin Boucher of Reform got 486 votes, and Steve Marsh of the Freedom Alliance received 228 votes.

Mr Enea and the Conservatives centred their campaign around the need for a relief road to relieve traffic congestion on the M4, and their votes increased from 8,042 in 2016.

But reacting to her win, Ms Bryant said the result showed euphoria around an M4 relief road prior to the election wasn’t “what people thought on the doorsteps”.

“I felt when we were speaking to people on the doorstep, what was coming up was people understood my position that the pandemic had changed things [around the relief road],” she said.

Her attention, she said, will now turn to finding more sustainable solutions and carrying out the findings of the Burns commission into alternatives to the road, including better and more accessible public transport.

“I’m still getting lots of correspondence around Covid issues and keeping people updated on regulations and the challenges that come with that,” she added.

“The other important thing for Newport is the Burns commission and the partnership between the council and Transport for Wales among others.

“We want to see that moving at pace because we really do need that to start happening and see some real differences in Newport.”

Mr Enea said: “I won’t stand again. I did it as a life experience, and I’ll now return to local politics, which I’m looking forward to.

“I’m extremely disappointed in the overall result, but encouraged we achieved more than 10,000 votes. I thought that would have us in the ball park, but that proved not to be the case.”

Turnout figures were slightly down on 2016. 43.3 per cent of the constituency voted, down from 44.7. 36.8 people voted in 2011.