AFTER reading the results of the General Election, one can only wonder.

Conservative candidate Karen Lumley got 15,296 votes, an increase of 881 from 2001, although not enough to win the seat.

I believe Karen did well and coming from a smaller party myself, the Green Party, I know what defeat is.

Yet Karen came back for a second go. It is not easy coming back after defeat - people who have never stood would not know this.

Whether or not the Conservatives re-elect her as candidate, she has shown the Labour Party, with the results of the Liberal Democrat and UKIP vote, that there were 22,279 people in Redditch who did not want Labour.

Wasn't this figure the very amount Jacqui Smith got the first time round back in 1997 with 22,280?

What a come down to 18,012 in 2005.

With a result like this, Jacqui cannot afford to be complacent with the people of this town.

What if there had been a Green candidate? How much would that have eaten into Labour's vote? We shall never know as not everybody is as brave as I was in 2001.

The Green vote has gone up when Greens have stood. Even in the Euro pean election the Green vote has risen in Redditch.

Given the right conditions, the right environment and a good turnout, would Jacqui have got back?

And there is still a large proportion of disillusioned people who did not vote. Why?

Who knows how it would have swung if they had voted.

As for Robin King praising his leader and wondering why his comrades want to rid his party of Tony Blair, I am not at all surprised.

He has not listened to the people who elected him into office and has blood on his hands.

He sent us to war saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but these were never found.

Yet more soldiers are still dying, even though the war is over.

How many mothers have lost their sons in this futile war?

Richard Armstrong

Linton Close

Redditch