The economist defeated former cabinet minister Theresa Villiers who had held the seat since 2005 reports David Floyd

The candidate for the Chipping Barnet seat at the count

Dan Tomlinson celebrated victory this morning after being elected as Labour’s first ever MP for Chipping Barnet.

The economist for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation defeated Conservative former cabinet minister Theresa Villiers by 2914 votes in the seat she had held since 2005.

In his victory speech, Tomlinson said: “It is a huge and overwhelming honour to be elected as your first ever Labour MP.”

Villiers, who had fought hard on local issues, opposing local housing developments and organising protests against ULEZ expansion, congratulated Tomlinson on his win and signed off saying: “Barnet’s a special place and I’ve always fought to keep it that way” before ending: “It’s been great. That’s it. Thank you and goodbye.”

The result means that Chipping Barnet has a Labour MP for the first time since its creation in 1974.

When Labour secured its previous landslide victory in 1997, the then Conservative MP Sir Sydney Chapman held on to the seat with a majority of just 1,035.

While Villiers had increased the Conservative majority to nearly 12,000 by 2010, since then it has been edging towards Labour and Barnet councillor Emma Whysall lost by just 353 votes in 2017.

A full report and post-result interview with Dan Tomlinson follows tomorrow.

Results:

Candidate	Party	Votes
Dan Tomlinson	Labour	21,585
Theresa Villiers	Conservative	18,671
Hamish Haddow	Reform UK	3,986
David Farbey	Green Party	3,442
Mark Durrant	Liberal Democrats	2,614
Richard Hewison	Rejoin EU	379
Kay Lauer	Independent	182

Majority – 2914

Turnout – 65.5%

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