Tories' victory in Euro Elections

Tories hang onto three Euro seats

The Conservatives comfortably won the most votes in the London region of the European election.

They held on to their three MEPs with 479,037 votes.

Labour now have two seats, a loss of one, after polling 372,590 votes. In third place were the Lib Dems with 240,156.

They won one seat, along with the Green Party and UKIP. The London region now only elects eight people to the Euro Parliament, one fewer than in 2004.

Although nationally Labour suffered its worst post-war election results, coming in third after UKIP, in London the party suffered only a 4% fall in votes.

Claude Moraes, Labour MEP, said: "To keep two Labour MEPs in London, to maintain the integrity of our vote and maintain what we did in the GLA and mayoral elections, I think is significant, positive result for us in London.

"We fought under some of the most difficult circumstances a team has had to fight a campaign."

'Hard to reign'

But despite winning most votes in the capital, the Conservatives' made "only a slight improvement" since winning the mayoralty last year, BBC London's political editor Tim Donovan said.

Charles Tannock, Conservative MEP, said: "We would have like to have done better. It's hard to reign in London."

But he said the results show that "the Conservatives are connecting with people across our diverse capital and responding to their concerns and aspirations".

The vote share of the Greens rose by 3% taking them above the UKIP while the BNP failed to make their mark in the capital.

Nationally the Conservatives won 28.6% of the vote, UKIP came second with 17.4%, Labour vote share fell to 15.3%, the Lib Dems 13.9%, the Greens 8.7% and the BNP 6.5%.

In the 2004 European elections the Conservatives won 26.7% of votes, Labour 22.6%, UKIP 16.1%, the Lib Dems 14.9%, the Greens 6.3% and the BNP 4.9%.