General Election: North Somerset result as Liam Fox is beaten by Labour

Labour have produced a stunning victory to take the previously rock-solid safe Conservative seat of North Somerset in the 2024 General Election, overturning Liam Fox’s massive 17,536 majority and ending his 32-year time as a Tory MP there.

Local pharmacist Sadik Al-Hassan benefitted from the Labour landslide, and tactical voting from previous Lib Dem voters who backed Labour this time, to become the first ever Labour MP for this area by a slim margin. The pharmacist from Patchway is the first ever Labour MP for the area., and won the seat with 19,138 votes.

He said it’s an “absolute honour to be selected” and he “cannot wait” to get to work. Not since 1910 had the area elected a non-Conservative MP. Liam Fox received 18,499 votes, Workers Party's Suneil Basu received 133 votes, Liberal Democrats' Ash Cartman received 7,121 votes, Reform UK's Alexander Kokkinoftas received 5,602 votes, and The Green Party's Oscar Livesey-Lodwick received 3,273 votes. The turnout for this constituency was 72.48%.

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Liam Fox congratulated his successor, saying: "It's an immense honour to be a Member of Parliament, though you'll soon discover that it's not quite as easy as it looks from the outside."

The seat, which covers the area south west of Bristol including the villages of Pill, Long Ashton, Failand and Abbots Leigh, across to the towns of Nailsea, Backwell, Clevedon and Portishead, has always been Conservative - apart from periods at the turn of the 20th century when it was held by the Liberals.

The unprecedented victory for Labour is the biggest win in the West of England at this General Election, and illustrates the scale of the Conservative collapse in the West Country, as Lib Dems and Labour take seats from Cornwall to Gloucestershire.

Liam Fox was the Conservative MP for the area since 1992 and one of the key architects of Brexit, becoming the Brexit Secretary in the Conservative Government for a time, as well as Defence Secretary under David Cameron.

The new Labour MP, Sadik Al-Hassan, is a pharmacist who has been a local councillor and deputy mayor and ran a campaign focussed on the NHS. The result saw the Conservative support for Dr Fox collapse, with many voters backing Reform UK instead, and many Lib Dem voters appearing to switch to Labour, despite coming a close third in 2019.

The full result for North Somerset is as follows:

Sadik Al-Hassan (Labour) 19,138 (35.6%, up 10)

Liam Fox (Conservative) 18,499 (34.4%, down 19.1)

Ashley Cartman (Lib Dem) 7,121 (13.2%, down 3.3)

Alexander Kokkinoftas (Reform UK) 5,602 (10.4%)

Oscar Livesey-Lodwick (Green) 3,273 (6.1%, up 1.2)

Suneil Basu (Workers Party) 133 (0.3%)