The Labour Party has retained it’s seats in Luton and also gained the Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard seat, ousting a long-time Conservative MP.

Labour retained the Luton North and Luton South & South Bedfordshire constituencies, and they also picked up the new seat of Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard.

The Conservatives did hold on to win in nearby Mid Bedfordshire, in one of the few UK seats which changed from a Labour seat to a Conservative one.

Sarah Owen was re-elected as Luton North MP, winning a second term after first winning the seat in 2019. She picked up 14,677 votes, ahead of Conservative candidate Jilleane Brown on 7,167.

James Fletcher of Reform UK had 4,666 votes in third, ahead of independent candidate Toqueer Shah with 4,393 votes. Workers Party Waheed Akbar had 3,914 votes, Ejel Khan of the Greens had 1,940, Liberal Democrats candidate Sean Prendergast had 1,890 and Paul Trathern of the Social Democrat Party picked up 98.

Turnout was among the lowest in the UK, recorded at 52%. This however was slightly more than in Luton South and South Bedfordshire, which recorded a turnout at 49.9%.

Winning the seat was Rachel Hopkins, who like Owen had been elected as a Labour MP for the first time in 2019.

Hopkins won with 13,593 votes, ahead of the Conservative candidate Mark Versallion with 6,735 votes.

Independent candidate Attiq Malik picked up 5,384 votes to finish third, ahead of Norman Maclean of Reform UK on 4,759 votes, Dr Yasin Rehman of the Workers Party on 3,110, Edward Carpenter of the Green Party with 2,401 and Liberal Democrats candidate Dominic Griffiths with 2,400.

One result of note was in Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard, which saw Andrew Selous fail to win re-election. The Conservative candidate and former Parliamentary under-secretary had been in Parliament since 2001 under the seat’s former name of South West Bedfordshire.

But in Selous’ first time contesting the newly redrawn seat, he was narrowly beaten by Labour candidate Alex Mayer, who will be the new MP for the constituency.

Mayer won by just 667 votes in the seat, with the Labour candidate winning 14,976 votes to Selous’ 14,309.

Reform UK candidate Harry Palmer took third with 8,071, ahead of Emma Holland-Lindsay of the Liberal Democrats with 6,497, Green Party candidate Sukhinder Hundal with 2,115 and English Democrat party candidate Antonio Vitiello with 77 points.

One of the few bright spots for the Conservatives in a difficult night in the UK was the regaining of the Mid Bedfordshire seat, which they had lost in a by-election held last October.

Blake Stephenson will represent the seat in the next Parliament, after the Tory candidate received 16,912 votes. He just edged out Maahwish Mirza of Labour, who picked up 15,591 votes.

Previously sitting Labour MP Alistair Strathern will remain in Parliament, as he was instead nominated by Labour for the Hitchin constituency in Hertfordshire and won there.

In Mid Bedfordshire, David Holland of Reform UK picked up 8,594 votes to finish third, ahead of Stuart Roberts of the Liberal Democrats with 4,068, Cade Silbey of the Green Party with 2,584, independent candidate Gareth Mackey with 1,700, and the SDP’s Richard Brunning with 172 votes.