Essex MPs confident that snap election will give PM a mandate

Eleanor Laing, MP for Epping Forest, says she is already on an "election footing" with the Essex County Council elections coming up in two weeks and believes the way forward is to re-elect her to continue serving Epping.

The deputy speaker of the House of Commons said: “Well first of all I am really pleased that we are having a general election.

“It was not entirely unexpected because since the result of the European Union referendum last summer, we have been in a part of political turmoil and the way to scale that down is to go to the people and for the Prime Minister to get her own mandate for how we are going to run the country for the next five years.”

Mrs Laing was elected MP for Epping Forest in 1997 and has held the safe Conservative seat since then.

Before she was appointed deputy speaker in October 2013, she was chairman of the 1922 Home and Constitutional affairs committee.

Mrs Laing stayed impartial throughout the EU referendum campaign, and later decided that she would vote to leave.

She added: “I’m very pleased that this is happening. We are already on an election footing anyway. We have important county council elections coming up on May 4. We are already campaigning and I’m looking forward to it.

“I have every confidence that the people of the UK will decide to have a strong Conservative government to take us forward because that provides us with a strong future.”

Eric Pickles, MP for Brentwood and Ongar, gave the same message, telling BBC Essex that “Brexit is probably the most important thing we are avowed to outside a war. A massively important thing and it’s massively important that she (Prime Minister) has a good mandate and the ability to get things through.”

Mrs Laing’s closest rival in the last election was a UKIP candidate with an 18 percent share of the vote. Labour finished third with 16 percent of the vote.

Mrs Laing held the seat with more than 27,000 votes and a 54 percent share of the votes.