LONG time Thurrock councillor and now twice-beaten general election candidate John Kent looks back on recent days in an exclusive reflection on the election and its postscript with Thurrock Nub News.

He writes:

ELECTIONS ARE FUNNY THINGS

When Theresa May called a snap General Election in 2017 Thurrock Labour Party was ill-prepared. We had no candidate in place, no campaign plan and little by way of resources. Nonetheless, we fought a vigorous campaign and came within 345 of an unlikely victory.

Two and a half years on, with a candidate in place, a well planned campaign and resources - we were rolled over by more than 11,000 votes by a Boris Johnson shaped steamroller.

I, again, warmly congratulate Jackie Doyle - Price on her victory and wish her well representing all our interests over the next four or five years.

It is right that the a Labour Party takes a little time to consider what went so badly wrong in places like Thurrock. It certainly wasn't lake of work - here in Thurrock we knocked on tens of thousands of doors and spoke to thousands of people.

For me there were three big problems with the Labour Party campaign.

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The first was the party's stance on Brexit.

I am one of those who argued that a second referendum would be a disaster for seats like Thurrock. We should have been very clear that we accepted the outcome of the referendum - instead we allowed the Conservatives to make the case that, despite having been in government every day since the referendum, the Labour Party was to blame for failure to have left the European Union.

That made "Get Brexit Done" an incredibly powerful message.

The Labour Party has to learn the lesson from this and rule out ever pushing to rejoin the EU in its current form.

The second issue was the manifesto.

Taken item by item few people disagreed with taking strong action to end rough sleeping or compensating the WASPI women or argued against scrapping tuition fees, hospital parking charges or making all prescriptions free - nor did they argue that the top 5% of earners shouldn't pay a little more tax to make these things happen.

The problem was that, cumulatively, it was just unbelievable for too many.

Finally, these issues along with a failure to deal quickly or firmly enough with the anti semitism of a few, a perceived lack of patriotism and some unpopular views on foreign affairs - despite having clearly opposed foreign ventures such as the Iraq wars - allowed the media to demonise Jeremy Corbyn to such an extent that he was, by far, the biggest issue in the doorsteps making it impossible to discuss any other issues.

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A poor campaign and a terrible result doesn't change the fact that rising homelessness, increased use of food banks, the shortage of GPs and nurses in our NHS, school funding, reducing inequality, tax fairness are all issues that people really want to see addressed and, whoever the next Labour leader may be, we must keep these issues at our core and learn the lessons from this campaign - we owe it to those that, as a party, we exist to represent.