Conservative Conor Burns secured another win in Bournemouth West with an increased percentage of the vote – but a significantly smaller majority.

Burns, who claimed 23,812 votes and 53.5% of the ballot, voiced concerns about his party’s campaign, despite his win, following a difficult night for the Tories nationally.

The stronger than expected results for the Labour Party were visible in Bournemouth West, with candidate David Stokes getting 16,101 and 36.2% of the vote, a rise of 18.5%.

In the biggest percentage turnout for Bournemouth West since 1997, Burns gained his highest number of votes since winning the seat in 2010.

However, the Conservative was concerned by the approach that the party took to the election.

He said: “In all campaigns the party and the candidates that are positive, are on the side of tomorrow and believe our best days lie ahead and communicates that enthusiasm to serve to deliver a better country for everyone is the party that wins.

“I’m not at this point convinced that the campaign we have just fought was as positive, future-orientated and tomorrow-orientated as it should have been.”

The Labour surge came in part with UKIP’s 18.5% of the vote in 2015 to be split amongst the parties standing in Bournemouth West.

The Liberal Democrat candidate Phil Dunn claimed 6.6% in third, with Simon Bull of the Greens on 2.8% and Jason Halsey of the Pirate Party on 0.9%.

Stokes, who was standing in his fifth General Election in the area, had his most successful night for the Labour party and is targeting even more next time around.

He said: “I’ve been really impressed. It’s been going well for us in the last few weeks, we knew there was an upsurge, we knew we had strong support, but that was truly amazing.

“It’s a good result but not good enough and I believe next time we will have a chance of taking this seat.

“I think people are waking up and realising that the government of yesterday is certainly not strong and stable.”

The victory for the Conservatives in Bournemouth played its part in a repeat of the 2015 clean sweep of Dorset.

Although a positive for the party locally, Burns said that the Conservatives need to learn from this campaign.

“Politicians should be very careful telling the electorate what they the politician thinks the election is going to be about because the electorate quite rightly regard themselves as the bosses” Burns added.

“It is clear to me that what the Prime Minister wanted to be a Brexit election didn’t end up being a Brexit election so we must take our share of the responsibility for that.”