LABOUR stormed to victory at the Euro election count — while UKIP secured three MEPs to send to the European Parliament, their best ever result in the North West.
The two groups took votes from the BNP and the Liberal Democrats, with sitting MEPs Nick Griffin and Chris Davies both losing their seats.
The Conservative party held on to two MEPs, Jacqueline Foster and Sajjad Karim.
Theresa Griffin, the top candidate to have been elected for Labour, said she will spend the next five years in Brussels and Strasbourg fighting for jobs, growth and the protection of “our most precious institution”, the NHS.
She said she will continue to work with the town’s three MPs and Bolton Council leader Cllr Cliff Morris to provide high-quality training and jobs for young people.
She added: “I attended a women’s day event with Bolton West MP Julie Hilling a few weeks ago and met 105 women to talk about issues that matter to them.
“A lot of the legislation that is important to them comes from the EU — equal pay, protection at work and the right to return to work after you have had a baby.”
UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall hailed the count as the beginning of “four-party politics” in the UK, while newly elected Louise Bours said they would use the European election as a springboard for the general election in May next year.
The party won two council seats at Bolton’s local elections on Thursday, the first in Greater Manchester, and gained a greater proportion of the vote in Bolton compared with the North West.
Ms Bours said: “The North West has been a difficult region for us, but we really put our message out there and people like what we are saying.
“Ahead of 2015 we will sit down and decide what seats to target — we have never done that before — depending on where we returned local candidates and whether we have a good base of local support.”
The Green Party’s leading candidate in the North West, Peter Cranie, blamed the media attention on UKIP for the lack of his party’s success.
The party had been hoping to secure their first representative in European Parliament, and increased its share of the vote.
He said: “Across the region we’ve seen a stunning rise in membership, with hundreds of people joining us during the campaign.
“In the last few weeks of the campaign, once people heard about our policies, we gained their support, but it wasn’t enough to make up for UKIP’s media saturation.”
CANDIDATES WHO STOOD FOR EUROPE
An Independence
From Europe:
Helen Bashford
Gill Kearney
Pauline Penny
Kay Bashford
Faye Raw
Lorna Markovitch
Jennie Ransome
Jill Stockdale
British National Party:
Nick Griffin
Dawn Charlton
Clive Jefferson
Eddy O’Sullivan
Simon Darby
Kay Pollitt
Derek Adams
David O’Loughlin
Conservative:
Jacqueline Foster
Sajjad Karim
Kevin Beaty
Deborah Dunleavy
Joe Barker-Willis
Daniel Hamilton
Chris Whiteside
James Walsh
English Democrats:
Stephen Morris
Paul Rimmer
Derek Bullock
Paul Whitelegg
Steven McEllenborough
Laurence Depares
Valerie Morris
Anthony Backhouse
Green Party:
Peter Cranie
Gina Dowding
Laura Bannister
Jill Perry
John Knight
Ulrike Zeshan
Lewis Coyne
Jake Welsh
Labour Party:
Theresa Griffin
Afzal Khan
Julie Ward
Wajid Khan
Angeliki Stogia
Steve Carter
Pascale Lamb
Nick Parnell
Liberal Democrats:
Chris Davies
Helen Foster-Grime
Jo Crotty
Qassim Afzal
Jane Brophy
Sue McGuire
Gordon Lishman
Neil Christian.
NO2EU:
Roger Bannister
George Waterhouse
Jacqueline Grunsell
John Metcalfe
George Tapp
Mark Rowe
James Healy
Kevin Morrison
Pirate Party:
Maria Aretoulaki
George Walkden
Jack Allnutt.
Socialist Equality Party:
Chris Marsden
Julie Hyland
Robert Skelton
Lucy Warren
Mark Dowson
Ajitha Gunaratne
Danny Dickinson
Joe Heffer
UKIP:
Paul Nuttall
Louise Bours
Steven Woolfe
Shneur Odze
Lee Slaughter
Simon Noble
Peter Harper
John Stanyer
BOLTON
Turnout: 36.7 per cent
Total verified ballots: 72,153
- An Independence From Europe: 1,124 (1.56 per cent)
- British National Party: 1,534 (2.1 per cent)
- Conservatives: 13,696 (18.9 per cent)
- English Democrats: 826 (1.1 per cent)
- Green Party: 3,486 (4.8 per cent)
- Labour: 25,608 (35.4 per cent)
- Liberal Democrats: 2,290 (3.2 per cent)
- NO2EU: 186 (0.2 per cent)
- Socialist Equality Party: 134 (0.2 per cent)
- Pirate Party: 289 (0.4 per cent)
- UKIP: 22, 983 (31.9 per cent)
NORTH WEST
Turnout: 33.66 per cent
Total verified ballots: 175,687
- An Independence from Europe: 26,731 (1.5 per cent)
- British National Party: 32,826 (1.9 per cent)
- Conservatives: 351,985 (20.1 per cent)
- English Democrats: 19,522 (1.1 per cent)
- Green Party: 123,075 (7 per cent)
- Labour: 594,063 (33.9 per cent)
- Liberal Democrats: 105,487 (6 per cent)
- NO2EU: 5,402 (0.3 per cent)
- Socialist Equality Party: 5,067 (0.3 per cent)
- Pirate Party: 8,597 (0.5 per cent)
- UKIP: 481,932 (27.5 per cent)
North West MEPs
Theresa Griffin (Labour)
Paul Nuttall (UKIP)
Jacqueline Foster (Conservative)
Afzal Khan (Labour)
Louise Bours (UKIP)
Julie Ward (Labour)
Sajjad Karim (Conservative)
Steven Woolfe (UKIP)
More:
- European election result: UKIP and Labour boost, Lib Dems and BNP out
- As it happened: 2014 European election count live - north west
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