TORY Guy Opperman was carried back to Westminster in triumph on Friday when the results of the General Election for Hexham were finally announced.

And his reward for a record-breaking victory was being appointed an assistant whip by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mr Opperman’s result was one of the last to be declared across the whole country, and for a time, it looked as though Hexham could be the seat that gave the Tories the magical 326 seats they needed for an overall majority.

It wasn’t to be – the Cotswolds took the Tories over the line – but it was still a hugely satisfying day for Mr Opperman, who fully justified the 200-1 on odds offered on him by Ladbrokes.

It was clear from early on that Mr Opperman was on his way to a record breaking victory.

His majority more than doubled from 5,788, when he was first elected in 2010 to 12,031. For the first time since 1992, the Tories won the seat with more votes than the other four candidates put together.

Labour’s Liam Carr finished runner-up, adding 2,500 more votes than Labour managed in 2010.

And it was a good day for UKIP, whose candidate David Nicholson, a former Northumberland County Council member, who came a creditable third with 4,302 votes.

As in the rest of the country, the election was a dis aster for the Liberal Democrats, who had finished second in Hexham in 2010 with more than 13,000 votes.

Former leader of Northumberland County Council Jeff Reid polled fewer than 3,000 votes this time round, and finished second bottom of the poll.

However, he did less badly than many other Lib Dem candidates across the country, managing to hang onto his deposit.

Bringing up the rear, but with head held high, was the Green Party’s Lee Williscroft-Ferris, who polled just under 2,500 votes.

As the Greens only formed a Tynedale branch at the turn of the year, he felt he had done as well as could be expected – and also saved his deposit.

The Conservative vote in Hexham increased by 9.5 per cent to 22,834 – the second highest increase in the country behind Bromsgrove.

And while some way short of Peter Atkinson’s winning 24,967 in 1992, the increase in Tory vote was the largest ever increase in the Conservative vote in Hexham between two General Elections, since the seat was won by the Conservatives (rather than Unionists) in 1931.

For the last four General Elections, the Conservatives have won the Hexham seat with an average of 42.2 per cent of the vote.

This time, the Tories took 52.7 per cent of the votes cast, making it the first time in 23 years the Conservatives had won both the seat and the majority of votes in the constituency.

Discounting the 2010 result, Labour had the lowest number of votes in the constituency since 1987, with barely a quarter of the votes cast.

UKIP came in with just below 10 per cent of the vote, with the Lib Dems collapsing by 23.1 per cent to just 6.8 per cent, and the Greens registering 5.6 per cent.