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Johnson says election has given him ‘overwhelming mandate’ for Brexit

BORIS JOHNSON claimed today he would heal the divisions of Brexit after a string of Labour strongholds fell to the Tories.

During a speech outside Downing Street, the Prime Minister said that his majority of 80 gives him an “overwhelming mandate” to take Britain out of the EU by the end of January.

All 650 seats were declared by the afternoon, showing the Conservatives’ strongest election performance since 1987.

Labour supporters were left in shock on Friday, having seen their pro-Brexit heartlands turn blue and their pro-Remain vote split with other parties.

Mr Johnson’s controversial chief adviser Dominic Cummings criticised “educated Remainer campaigner types” who failed to read the mood of the country.

Mr Cummings is credited with organising the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum.

He said: “After the shock of the referendum, MPs and journalists should have taken a deep breath and had a lot of self-reflection of why they misunderstood what was going on in the country.

“But instead a lot of people just doubled down on their own ideas and fucked it up even more.”

“MPs need to reflect, the media needs to reflect and they need to realise that the conversations they have in London are a million miles away from reality,” he added.

Results on Friday showed that Labour lost 59 seats, most notably in ex-mining communities in the north of England, the Liberal Democrats lost one, while the SNP gained 13 in Scotland.

Emma Dent Coad, the only Labour MP that Kensington has ever had, lost the seat she won in the 2017 election to the Tories after 18 months in office. Lib Dem Sam Gyimah split the anti-Tory vote, receiving 9,312 votes in what was described as a failure of tactical voting.

Ms Dent Coad was just 150 votes away from retaining the constituency ahead of the second phase of the Grenfell tower inquiry in the new year.

A sliver of hope could be seen in Putney, a historically Tory seat that was taken by Labour.

Meanwhile, all the MPs who switched from both Labour and the Conservatives to the centrist Independent Group for Change lost their seats.

Two former Labour MPs turned Lib Dems – Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger – failed to secure seats in London.

Pro-Corbyn independent candidates George Galloway and Chris Williamson both lost their deposits.

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