General election 2019: Conservatives take Wakefield from Labour

Labour have lost Wakefield after 87 years on what has been described as a "disastrous night" for the party.

Wakefield had been under Labour control since 1932 but Tory Imran Ahmad-Khan defeated Mary Creagh by 3,358 votes.

Mr Ahmad-Khan said: "The first thing we must do is to keep faith in the people of Wakefield and...get Brexit done."

The Conservatives also took Dewsbury, Keighley and Colne Valley but long-standing Labour MPs Yvette Cooper and Jon Trickett held their seats.

Ms Creagh, who had been the MP for Wakefield since 2005, said she feared the impact of a hard Brexit on the city.

She said it had been a "disastrous night" for Labour and the party had to listen to the voters.

Ms Creagh was involved in the 2015 Labour leadership race but pulled out. She later said she would not serve in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet.

Ms Cooper, who also ran against Mr Corbyn in the leadership contest, held her Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford seat, although her majority was reduced from 14,499 to 1,276.

She said: "There's been some very talented and hard working MPs, including Mary Creagh in Wakefield, who we've lost and that is a deep shame.

"We've lost a lot of votes, we've lost a lot locally, we've lost a lot nationally and the reason that matters so much is because I think there are people who really need a strong Labour Party and a Labour government and they've been let down.

"The perception of the party as a whole, the perception of our leadership, all of these things came up and we're going to have to reflect very seriously."

If you cannot see the graphic above, click here.

Across West Yorkshire, the Conservative Party held five seats while Labour defended 13.

Mr Trickett, who has previously come out in support of a "Labour Brexit", held Hemsworth with a majority of 1,180 - down from 10,174 in 2017.

He said he had warned Labour about Brexit but the party had "failed to understand" the result of the 2016 EU Referendum.

Mr Trickett said: "There are people in our party who are determined to attempt to reverse the decision of the people, that was a mistake and we've been punished for it."

Labour's Barry Sheerman retained his Huddersfield seat in what has been his closest election fight for years.

The Labour veteran, who first became an MP in 1979, saw his 12,005 majority reduced to 4,937.

He said: "It's not a good night for the Labour Party nationally. This is a disaster.

"Now we have got to go away, lick our wounds, find out what went wrong and in a sensible and comradely way put things right.

"We owe it to the British public to do that because without a strong Labour Party, Boris Johnson and his nationalist, populist ideas will do great damage to our country."

Paula Sherriff, who pleaded with Boris Johnson to refrain from using "dangerous" words like "surrender" during a heated debate in the Commons in September, lost her seat in Dewsbury.

She was seen leaving the declaration in tears after the seat was taken by Conservative candidate Mark Eastwood.

Mr Eastwood paid tribute to Ms Sherriff for being a hard-working MP for the town and said there had never been a bad word between them, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

He said: "There has been quite a lot of unpleasantness in politics. Maybe Brexit has contributed to that.

"I would like to see politics be a bit nicer in the future. I now want to get Brexit out of the way."

James Vincent, BBC Yorkshire Political Editor

The ballot boxes and tables have been put away at the Leeds Arena ready for tonight's gig, a nostalgia night called We Love the Nineties.

Yorkshire Labour supporters might be forgiven for desperately hoping they could go back to victories like 1997.

Saying Labour did badly here doesn't really cut it. People in parts of Rotherham and Doncaster now have a Conservative MP for the first time in their constituency's history.

The West Yorkshire seats were always going to be tough. Four of them went. But further south three more communities kicked Labour out.

Rother Valley is made of former mining villages - it had been Labour since 1918. Don Valley surrounds the town where railway workers created the Labour movement. Half of Penistone and Stocksbridge only exists because it was formed around the steelworks.

These were Labour areas. But not anymore.

This Brexit election turned things around. The view here on the Labour leadership also made the party feel less connected to its roots.

The December 12 election returned results on a Friday the 13th the party will never forget.

Use the form below to send us your questions and we could be in touch.

In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions.

If you are reading this page on the BBC News app, you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question on this topic.