Tory foot soldiers fight to hold ground against red advance in London

Hughes. Labour remained the capital’s biggest party, taking Brentford & Isleworth, Ealing Central & Acton and Ilford North from the Tories.

A narrow win by 1,086 votes in Enfield North will see Joan Ryan return to the Commons for L abour and former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer also held Holborn & St Pancras for Ed Miliband’s party.

But Labour failed to take Hendon, Harrow Ea s t , Fi nchl ey & Gol der s Green, Battersea and Croydon Central — where a recount failed to find enough Labour votes to unseat Tory Gavin Barwell.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone warned his party not go back to centrist New Labour policies in a bid to recover popular support.

He said: “We lost our working-class core vote during the New Labour years because we didn’t give good jobs to working class people.

“We didn’t build homes for their kids, and we can’t claw it back by going down that Blair road again.”

Mayor Boris Johnson celebrated his victory in Uxbridge & South Ruislip on his wedding anniversary by paying tribute to his wife Marina.

He said the win was a vindication of George Osborne’s economic policies: “The people of Britain after a long and exhausting campaign have finally spoken. I don’t think we need any fancy constitutional experts to tell us what they were trying to say.

“I think they have decisively rejected any attempt to take this country back to the Seventies. I think they have decisively rejected old-fashioned and outdated politics of division.”

After the result in Mr Hughes’s former Bermondsey & Old Southwark seat was declared, Labour victor Neil Coyle paid tribute to his predecessor’s service.

Mr Hu gh e s said: “Liberalism is not embarrassed. Liberalism is not ashamed. Liberalism is proud of the way in which we have served this community.”

The shock losses of Mr Cable’s Twickenham seat and Mr Davey’s Kingston & Surbiton seat to the Tories were compounded by the loss of Sutton & Cheam to Mr Cameron’s party.

L abour demolished

the Lib -Dem candidate in Hornsey & Wood Green, Lynne Featherstone, by more than 11,000 votes.

Mr Cable said: “Unfortunately this has been a terrible night for our party all over.

“But I’m absolutely sure that we are