ELECTION 2019: All the big names who lost their seats as Boris Johnson sweeps to victory
3 min read
The 2019 General Election delivered a remarkable majority for Boris Johnson but along the way a host of big names lost their seats. Here is a rundown of the most high-profile casualties.
Jo Swinson
The Lib Dem leader began the election campaign talking up her party’s chances to the extent she suggested she was a third candidate to be Prime Minister.
But she ends it by losing her own seat in a disastrous night for the Lib Dems, resigning as leader after less than 150 days in charge.
Ms Swinson had served as the MP for East Dunbartonshire from 2005 until losing it to the SNP in 2015.
She managed to win it back two years later with a majority of more than 5,000 – but once again tasted defeat after Amy Callaghan pinched the constituency for Nicola Sturgeon’s party by just 149 votes.
Nigel Dodds
The DUP’s deputy leader and its Westminster spokesman lost his Belfast North seat to Sinn Fein’s John Finucane, in one of two seats lost by Arlene Foster’s party in Northern Ireland.
Mr Dodds has been the MP since 2001, and the constituency has never elected a republican, having had a unionist representative in Parliament since the 1880s.
Mr Finucane, who stood unsuccessfully in 2017, is the son of Pat Finucane, a lawyer who represented high-profile members of the IRA, who was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in front of him in 1989.
Dennis Skinner
The legendary ‘Beast of Bolsover’ bowed out of politics after 49 years as an MP in a striking result for the Tories.
For Boris Johnson’s party to gain his Derbyshire seat, made up largely of former mining communities, would have been unthinkable before Brexit. But, as in places like Blyth and Wrexham, the EU referendum has changed all that.
Parliament has lost one of its most iconic and infamous personalities, who was set to become Father of the House as the longest-serving MP after Ken Clarke’s retirement. With Mr Skinner gone that mantle will now fall on to Conservative grandee Sir Peter Bottomley.
Zac Goldsmith
The Conservative environment minister is his party’s most high-profile casualty, losing his Richmond Park seat to the Lib Dems.
The former London mayoral candidate had regained the leafy south west London constituency in 2017 after losing a 2016 by-election over Heathrow to Sarah Olney.
And in an area which voted 71% for Remain Mr Goldsmith, an ardent Brexiteer, was always under pressure to hold off the challenge from Ms Olney’s pro-EU party.
Laura Pidcock
Another brick in Labour’s so-called “red wall” which came crumbling down overnight, the 32-year-old rising star was tipped as a future party leader.
But in a massive shock she lost her North West Durham seat to Richard Holden, a former special advisor to several Tory cabinet ministers.
He overturned her almost 9,000-vote majority to win the mainly mining and steelworking constituency for his party for the first time since it was re-formed in 1950.
Chuka Umunna
After a roller-coaster year where he has represented four different political stripes, the high-profile former minister is out of Parliament.
He left Labour to join the newly-former Independent Group, who then became Change UK, before quitting them to go independent, and then joining the Liberal Democrats.
Umunna had been the MP for Streatham in south London, but switched seats in the capital to stand in the Cities of London Westminster. He finished 4,000 votes behind the Conservative’s Nickie Aiken.
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