CONSERVATIVE candidate James Gray has seen his majority increase after he was re-elected to serve North Wiltshire in the next parliament.

On what he described as a “disappointing” night for the Conservative Party nationally, Mr Gray kept his seat with 32,398 votes, an increase of 3,460.

Throughout the country, the Conservatives were unable to complete the landslide victory many had predicted with the shock exit poll predicting they would be the largest party but would not be able to claim an overall majority.

Mr Gray, who was first elected as an MP in 1997, said: “We’re disappointed clearly, we hoped for a very large majority and quite plainly it looks as though we haven’t got that… which makes you wonder why on earth we had an election.

“Theresa May has been a very good leader but I didn’t support her in the original leadership battle.

“I think if we don’t have a majority then she will have a difficult time and she wouldn’t want to lead a party where she’s lost a majority.

“She’ll be weighing up her options as we speak.”

The Liberal Democrats were returned as the second largest party in North Wiltshire with their candidate Brian Mathew receiving 9,521 votes in what became a very narrow race with third placed Peter Baldrey of Labour who achieved 9,399 votes.

Brian Mathew said: “I’m relieved we’ve maintained second place.

“The real message is that we, on the centre-left, have to work together.

“There may well be another election quite soon.”

Peter Baldrey said: “It was an amazing result really in North Wiltshire, it was our best result ever.

“We’ve exceeded expectations without a shadow of a doubt.”

Elsewhere, 1,141 people voted for the Green Party’s Phil Chamberlain and 376 votes went to Malmesbury’s Lisa Tweedie.

Controversial candidate Paddy Singh, who was dropped by UKIP over a string of racist tweets he sent, received 871 votes.

Turnout was 75.35 per cent with 53,797 total votes cast.