Cllr Dave McElroy, the Green Party candidate for Reading Central said ahead of the result: “It has been particularly easy to persuade traditional Labour voters to vote Green, but naturally we can’t talk to all 35,000 people.
Speaking to Reading Today, he said: “The overwhelming majority of voters are looking to get rid of the Conservatives.
“The biggest thing for me personally is that people who just five years ago might have voted for UKIP but wouldn’t have told you, now seem very proud of it, which does my head in.”
He explained: “I understand where they’re coming from; they identify real issues, but I don’t believe the solutions offered to them by those parties are any good.
“A huge landslide is not necessarily a mandate for a party to do what it wants– it’s a rejection of the last 14 years and a vote for change.
“We want a result that shows Kier Starmer that moving to the right is not the solution, and to take the problems we face very seriously and come up with real solutions.”
