BARNSLEY CENTRAL AND BARNSLEY EAST: Jeff Ennis seat held by Labour new face

VOTERS in Barnsley East returned a new Labour MP to replace previous incumbent Jeff Ennis who announced earlier this year he was stepping down for "personal reasons".

Mr Ennis, who was born and brought up in Grimethorpe, at the heart of the constituency, had held the seat since 1997, having previously served as leader of Barnsley Council.

His replacement, Michael Dugher, won the new Barnsley East seat, created as a result of boundary changes, with a majority of 11,090 on a 56 per cent turnout, but saw a swing of 14 per cent to the Lib Dems.

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Their candidate, John Brown, came second with 6,969 votes, just over 300 ahead of the Conservative candidate James Hockney.

Another notable candidate standing in the seat was former NUM vice-chairman Ken Capstick, who was representing the Socialist Labour Party, led by Arthur Scargill.

Mr Capstick was pushed into last place out of eight candidates with 601 votes, behind two independent candidates, UKIP candidate Tony Watson and fourth-placed BNP candidate Colin Porter, who polled 3,301 votes.

Mr Dugher, who is from Edlington, near Doncaster, previously worked as an adviser to Gordon Brown in Downing Street. He was also head of policy for the AEEU engineering union which is now part of Unite and said his priorities were "public services and help for pensioners and hard-working families".

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Eric Illsley was re-elected to serve the neighbouring constituency of Barnsley Central where the result also showed a swing to the Liberal Democrats of 4.2 per cent.

Mr Illsley, who has been MP for the constituency for 23 years, won back his seat with a majority of just over 11,000 despite facing bad publicity over claims for council tax at the height of MPs' expenses scandal.

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