Reigate stayed blue as chair of the foreign affairs select committee Crispin Blunt comfortably held onto his seat after criticising voters as the Labour party gained ground on the Conservatives.

Mr Blunt received 30,896 votes (57.4 per cent) to reclaim the seat he has held since first elected in 1997.

As analysts compiling an exit poll predicted a hung parliament on Thursday night, Mr Blunt told the BBC: “Some people say the electorate never get it wrong, but if we end up with numbers like that, the electorate have plainly got it wrong. That’s the truth of it.

“(The Labour party) presented the country with a situation which is going to be extremely difficult to put together a governing coalition.

“If (the Conservative party) can’t (form a governing coalition) I rather expect we’ll be back here again before very long.”

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party defied pundits to gain 30 seats across the UK – although this was not enough to overtake the Tories.

In Reigate, meanwhile, Labour made big gains of 11.9 per cent of the vote with 13,282 (24.7 per cent) ballots cast for Toby Brampton.

The Liberal Democrats’ candidate Anna Tarrant won 5,889 votes (10.9 per cent) as the party increased its vote share in the constituency by half a percentage point.

Joseph Fox trailed in last place with UKIP losing 10.4 per cent of its share of votes, with just 1,542 residents casting their ballot for him.