RE-ELECTED Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown has described the national situation as ‘difficult’ following yesterday’s General Election.

While the long-serving MP regained his seat with a large majority, Britain overall is looking at a Hung Parliament with Brexit negotiations set to begin in a matter of days.

Mr Clifton-Brown won 36,201 seats in the constituency he has held for 25 years, though the surprise gains for Labour across the country were somewhat reflected in the Cotswolds as well.

In 2015, Labour candidate Manjinder Singh Kang received 5,240 votes, while yesterday, Labour’s Mark Huband took 10,702 – and in doing so saw his party overtake the Liberal Democrats who took only 9,748.

“Obviously, personally, I am very pleased with my result,” said Mr Clifton-Brown, speaking at the count at Cotswold Leisure Centre.

“I’m a bit apprehensive about the national result, and what will happen now, particularly in the Brexit negotiations, we’ll just have to wait and see.

“I think it looks as if it’s going to be quite a difficult parliamentary term coming up for all of us.

“Delighted to be re-elected, delighted to be part of the governing party, I hope. But it will be difficult,” he said.

Asked if he was expecting the national result, he said: “No, I wasn’t.”

“I thought we would do somewhat better than this.

“A reasonable overall majority, but the clue was in my polling station tours, today. “I’ve been around at least a dozen polling stations today, right around the constituency, and it was clear that they were all very busy, for a start, but secondly a lot of young people were voting.

“And I did have an idea that perhaps the Labour Party were going to do better than people had imagined.”

To form a majority government, a party must win at least 326 seats, which none were able to do.

Following the triggering of Article 50, Brexit negotiations are set to begin in 11 days’ time.