General Election 2024: Labour wins all three Bolton seats

In the early hours of Friday morning each seat in turn was declared for Labour, which is now expected to form the next government.

Bolton North East, once one of the UK’s most marginal seats, was won by Kirith Entwistle with a total of 16,166 votes cast.

She said: “Thank you to the people of Bolton North East for electing me as their first female member of parliament, I certainly hope I won’t be the last.

“And after 14 years of Conservative failure you have demanded change.

“Under Keir Starmer the Labour Party has changed and is back in the service of working people.”

The count took place at Bolton Arena (Image: Phil Taylor)

Ms Entwistle came more than 6,000 votes ahead of her closest rival, the Conservative Party’s Adele Warren, who replaced outgoing MP Mark Logan as the Tory candidate.

She was joined as a newly elected MP by her party colleague Phil Brickell, who unseated Conservative Chris Green in Bolton West.

Mr Green had served as MP for the area since 2015 but came nearly 5,000 votes behind his Labour opponent.

Mr Brickell said: "Time and time again people have told me that our communities face immense challenges."

He added: "I know that a Labour government will deliver on the promises of this election campaign, rebuilding trust one step at a time."

Yasmin Qureshi, who until this week had been Bolton’s only sitting Labour MP, finished more than 6,000 votes ahead of her nearest rival, Julie Pattison of Reform UK.

To chorus’s wishing her a happy birthday, Ms Qureshi thanked the voters, her campaigners and told the result was the “best birthday present ever.”

She said that “people are rightly about the government's policy on Palestine" and that others are “fed up with 14 years of Conservative government.”

She said: "Enough is enough and change is here."

Speaking before the results were announce she had said she was aware that the issue in Gaza had sparked anger in her constituency.

Ms Qureshi said: “There’s a lot of people unhappy about it, and not just from within the Muslim community.

“Having been an incumbent MP for 14 years, I think people have been able to see my record on the issue, which has led to many people on the doorstep saying they’re voting for me.”

Labour’s three wins out of Bolton were mirrored across the country where Labour won a commanding overall majority to secure Keir Starmer’s position as the UK’s next Prime Minister.

After the release of the exit poll at 10pm but before the results were declared Cllr Martyn Cox, Conservative group leader on Bolton Council, said he believed his party had lost all three seats.

He said: "Exit polls are so accurate these days that when it came to 10pm and there were only going to be 130 Conservative seats it was self-evident that we weren't going to hold Bolton West or Bolton South East.

"There comes a point when the public stop listening to you."

Drawing comparisons to the fall of the Major government after Black Wednesday, Cllr Cox said for the Conservative government this moment came with Liz Truss's budget.

Cllr Cox said: “It was hard for anyone, even a candidate as hard working as Chris Green, to turn that around.”

Even before his result was declared, outgoing Conservative MP for Bolton West Chris Green said he did not believe Rishi Sunak could continue as leader of his party.

He said: "It is very hard for any political leader to survive a defeat of any measure.

"But for a defeat of monumental proportions it's very hard to see how he could or even would wish to continue."

"I always felt a significant degree of doubt about him becoming Prime Minister.

"You could see him as chancellor, an effective chancellor.

"But I think him becoming Prime Minister requires qualities that he did not have."

But Mr Green said he hoped the Conservative Party would have a "healthy" debate in the leadership contest ahead.

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Speaking after the count Mr Green said he believed the seeds of his party’s defeat had been sewn with its response to the Covid pandemic of 2020.

He said: “This is a niche opinion but if the government had explained to the country what its lockdown measures would mean in terms of the effects on our public services, in terms of our schools shutting down.

“If they had explained that to the country and then the country said yes then they would have been in a very different position.”

He added: “The first thing for me to do now is to have a short rest and then I need to find a new job.

“There is a big question about whether or not I return to frontline politics but that will be for some time in the future.”