CONGRATULATIONS to Alison McGovern on her election win in Wirral South.

More importantly, my thanks to Wirral South residents. I have enjoyed engaging with you over the past 28 months.

Also, many, many thanks to my hard-working team who enabled me to get our message out to all parts of Wirral South.

Unfortunately, as we feared, the Liberal Democratic vote collapsed from 6,611 to 1,474 and went to Labour assisted by a three-fold increase in Ukip vote from 1,274 to 3,737 which came off our potential vote.

The good news is we have a majority Conservative government which, ironically, will now protect the Wirral and the UK from what would have been the catastrophe of the Miliband / Balls anti-business policies, supported by the very Labour MPs Wirral has just elected.

The movement against Labour has been happening in Wales for some years albeit more slowly and eventually, one party states such as Merseyside will also realise Labour is the problem not the solution.

John Bell, Conservative parliamentary candidate, Wirral South.