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Louise Thomas
Editor
The Conservatives made no significant gains in a single seat in last week’s general election, analysis by The Independent can reveal.
Overall, the Tories lost 19.9 per cent of national vote share.
On an individual level, the party only made one mentionable gain — of just 2.3 per cent in Liverpool Riverside, where Labour won — while losing votes in every other seat across the country (excluding Northern Ireland).
The party saw steep declines across the board, losing more than 25 per cent of their previous vote share in 223 constituencies, where support was largely picked up by Reform, Labour, and the Lib Dems in certain seats.
The majority of the Lib Dems’ 72 seats (83 per cent) were won from the Tories, with 60 out of 64 gains coming from former Conservative constituencies like North Shropshire, Chichester and Torbay.
The most tectonic shift came in Clacton, where Nigel Farage was elected for the first time. The Conservatives lost -44 per cent of the vote in a historically safe seat, ending up at 27.9 per cent, while Reform won 46.2 per cent of votes.
In 2019, soon-to-be prime minister Liz Truss won 68.7 per cent of the vote in South West Norfolk, with Labour far behind at 18.3 per cent.
But locals turned their backs on her, with Ms Truss’s vote was down 43.4 per cent; leaving room for Labour MP Terry Jermy to win by just 630 votes.
In some constituencies, like West Dorset, the Conservatives lost their seat for the first time in parliamentary history.
Though the Conservatives still won 121 seats, one in three of those were by a thin margin.
Some 40 Tory seats were won by a margin of under 5 per cent, with majorities of under 2,500 people. In the weakest-won constituencies, Tory MPs squeezed in by just a few dozen votes.
Basildon and Billericay saw Conservative chairman Richard Holden hold his seat by just 20 votes, neck-and-neck with Labour candidate Alex Harrison.
The Conservatives’ closest wins also included Central Devon (majority of 61), Havant (92), and Exmouth and Exeter East (121).
The Tories lost 251 seats overall from 2019, though they did make one surprise win: Leicester East, a historically Labour constituency.
The local Labour Party in Leicester East has faced a troublesome few years, with former MP Keith Vaz suspended after being found by the Commons Standards Committee to have “expressed a willingness” to buy cocaine during an encounter with sex workers, and most recent MP Claudia Webbe convicted for harassment of a woman over 18 months.
Both Mr Vaz and Ms Webbe ran independently against Labour candidate Rajesh Agrawal in the 2024 general election, splitting the Labour vote. Ultimately, Conservative candidate Shivani Raja won with a comfortable majority of 4,426.
