MP on 'catastrophic' Euro defeat
Josie Hinton
THE British National Party won two seats in the European Parliamentary elections as Labour suffered its worst post-war election result - and hundreds of votes were cast for the far-right party in Westminster.
The result signalled a shift to the right in British politics, with the Tories winning the Euro race and thousands of voters switching their allegiances to parties such as UKIP and the BNP.
In Westminster, the Conservatives won almost half of the vote with 15,248 supporters.
Some 6,565 Westminster residents voted Labour, 4,351 opted for Liberal Democrats, 3,877 for the Green Party and 2,831 for UKIP.
Nearly 940 people in the borough voted for the BNP.
Turnout for Westminster was 29 per cent, with only 35 per cent of London residents turning out to vote.
This result helped to elect eight members of the European Parliament from the London region overall - comprising three Tories, two Labour candidates, a Lib Dem, a Green candidate and a member of UKIP.
Labour MP for Regent's Park and Kensington North, Karen Buck, admitted it was a "catastrophic" result for her party.
"It certainly shows that there's not a great deal of love for the Conservative Party - but all the major parties have taken a kicking in favour of protest votes and the party of government has taken the biggest kicking," she said.
"A large part of that is because of the whole thing about expenses and we have to learn from that really quickly.
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