By Anetha Sivananthan and Anna Mackenzie
December 13 2019, 2.44
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Munira Wilson made safe her Twickenham seat and increased the Liberal Democrat majority over the Conservatives, a valuable good news story on a bad night for Britain’s third party.
Ms Wilson picked up 36,166 votes, while Conservative candidate Isobel Grant won 22,045 votes ahead of Labour’s Ranjeev Walia (5,476 votes) and the Brexit Party’s Stuart Wells (816 votes).
After succeeding Vince Cable, Ms Wilson said: “I would like to thank the returning officer, the counting agents and the police for their hard work in ensuring that the election and the count had been run so smoothly and so very efficiently.
“I would like to thank my opponents for a good-natured and hard fought campaign and to the Greens for standing aside as part of the United Remain Alliance.
“Thank you above all to the residents of Twickenham, Teddington, St Margarets, Whitton and Roehampton for putting their faith and trust in me.
“I am honoured and deeply humbled to have been elected to serve as your Member of Parliament.”
Conservative candidate Ms Grant said: “You don’t know how it’s going to play out.
“It’s an incredible privilege to be here and have your name on the sheet.”
Labour candidate Mr Walia said: “I think the way we’ve run the campaign has been really fantastic actually, on the level of the information that we’ve put out.”
Mr Wells was not present at the count.
