General election result: Dennis Skinner loses Bolsover to the Conservatives, a seat he had won since 1970 The surprise result marks a remarkable night for the Conservatives

The UK’s longest-serving MP, Dennis Skinner, has lost his seat after the Conservatives won the constituency of Bolsover for the first time in its history.

Skinner, 87, had represented the area for Labour since 1970 and had been elected to parliament at 13 consecutive elections.

But in a sign of the re-alignment of British politics, the traditional mining town backed Tory candidate Mark Fletcher in Thursday’s general election.

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He beat his long-standing rival 21,791 votes to 16,492. The Brexit Party also received 4,151, while the Liberal Democrats got 1,759 votes.

Leave backing constituency

The constituency was among the strongest Leave supporting areas in the UK, having voted to leave the EU by more than 70 per cent three years ago.

Skinner had been a lifelong left-wing Euro-sceptic who argued that the UK should leave the EU long before the referendum of 2016. Despite his support for Brexit – he was among just a handful who voted Leave in 2016 – he chose not to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal when it was brought before parliament.

The stunning result marks a remarkable night for the Conservatives as they won almost all of their target seats in the so-called ‘red wall’ – the Leave backing constituencies in the north and midlands which the party needed to defend to prevent a Tory majority.

The exit poll at 10pm on Thursday night forecast them winning 191 seats; their worst election result since 1935.

Beast of Bolsover

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The loss of the octogenarian will be a blow to many in the Labour movement and in parliament more widely. He was known as the ‘Beast of Bolsover’ for his bombastic style in the Commons and defiant, left-wing speeches in defence of the working class.

Skinner joined the party in 1956, aged 24, and when he became an MP refused to accept a parliamentary salary in excess of miners’ wages, and during the miners’ strike he donated his wages to the National Union of Miners.

Though seen as on the party’s left, he had often supported more centrist figures within the party. He got on well with Tony Blair, but voted against the Iraq War. In 2010 he backed David Miliband for Labour leader. In 2015 he was among 36 MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership.

Had he been returned to parliament he would have been Father of the House. Skinner was sworn in as an MP on the same day as Ken Clarke, the former Tory MP, who was Father of the House in the last parliament. But as Clarke had an engagement to get to on the day, he allowed the Tory MP to be sworn in first, meaning Clark got the title in the last parliament.

Now it would appear Peter Bottomley, the 75-year-old Tory MP for Newport, will be the longest-serving male MP.

Who is Mark Fletcher?

Many residents of the Derbyshire will be waking up wondering who their new MP is. After all, many were not born when Skinner was first elected.

Fletcher is the grandson of a miner, who grew up in Doncaster and went to a state school.

He worked for a number of years in international trade as the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Uganda and Rwanda, before becoming the Director of Communications in the healthcare sector.