General Election 2019: Dewsbury's new MP Mark Eastwood 'over the moon' with result

Dewsbury’s new Conservative MP, Mark Eastwood, won the seat by unseating Labour's Paula Sherriff.

Mr Eastwood acknowledged the “fantastic result” for the Tories both locally and nationally.

And he put some of his success down to running a positive campaign in his home town of Dewsbury.

“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.”

He said he will be travelling to Westminster early next week as part of Boris Johnson’s majority.

And he reiterated his pledge: “The first priority will be to get Brexit over the line.”

In a closely-fought campaign the Tories polled 26,179 votes with Ms Sherriff coming in second with 24,618.

Mr Eastwood, who has previously stood six times in district elections, took the seat in his first candidacy as a parliamentary hopeful.

He overturned Ms Sherriff’s 3,321 majority and said winning was “a great feeling”.

He 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.

Looking to the future he added “the hard work starts now” and, adopting the mantra of Boris Johnson, added: “Let’s get Brexit done.”