General Election: Hung parliament confirmed and Conservatives retain all seats in Shropshire, Telford and Mid Wales - as it happened
A hung parliament has been confirmed in the General Election.
The Tories were not able to reach the 326 seats needed for a majority.
But was a good night for the Conservatives in Shropshire, Telford and Mid Wales as all of its MPs retained their seats.
What should have been plain sailing for the Conservatives proved to be anything but as Theresa May’s party lost seats – and left the Prime Minister fighting for her political life.
The Tories are still the party with the highest number of seats this morning but the party struggled desperately as it failed to hold on to its House of Commons majority.
And instead of the talk today being about looming Brexit talks, the UK was instead contemplating Mrs May’s possible exit from front-line politics.
Labour, led by former Shropshire schoolboy Jeremy Corbyn, exceeded expectations and gained seats – a prospect that looked highly unlikely when Mrs May called the poll on April 18.
It was an indifferent good night for the Lib Dems and a disastrous one for UKIP, which failed to win a single seat placing Paul Nuttall’s short reign as party leader under threat.
The SNP failed to match its performance from 2015, losing seats as Nicola Sturgeon’s grip on Scotland got weaker.
Theresa May’s decision to call an election this year – a move she had previously ruled out – was today looking like a political suicide note.
It also shone a light on a poor Conservative campaign that had seen an embarrassing U-turn on social care policy and the Tories looking shaky on the key issue of security.
Mrs May had set out on a mission to drum home the message that hers was the party the public could trust on Brexit.
But as the campaign wore on her ratings plummeted while support for Mr Corbyn steadily grew.
In a few short weeks Mrs May, considered the Tories major weapon when she called the election, became a liability.
The poll gave an added bite to proceedings as counting began at venues across Shropshire and mid Wales.
The key battleground came in Telford, where Conservative Lucy Allan just managed to hold on with a majority of 720.
Two years ago she had confounded expectations by snatching the seat in what had formerly been seen as a Labour stronghold.
However, her wafer-thin majority of just 730 meant the seat was always going to be vulnerable, and Mr Corbyn visited the seat twice during the course of the election campaign, only this week staging one of his set-piece rallies at the town’s Southwater Lake.
While it was not enough to see former Telford & Wrekin Council leader Kuldip Sahota take the seat back for Labour, Miss Allan’s majority is now smaller than it was last time.
In Montgomeryshire, Tory Glyn Davies held his seat with an increased majority of 9,285. Turnout for the seat, which had been held by the Liberal Democrats until 2010, was 70.1 per cent.
It may be Mr Davies’ last term as MP, as the constituency is expected to disappear under a boundary review due to come into force next year, although he today hinted he would like to stand again.
Elsewhere in the region, there was little change, with the rest of Shropshire’s Conservative MPs being re-elected.
Philip Dunne comfortably held on to his seat in Ludlow, former cabinet minister Owen Paterson retained North Shropshire and Mark Pritchard retained The Wrekin.
But while the Tories held firm in Shropshire, the drama of the national slump was happening around them.
