THE anti sleaze candidate, Mr Martin Bell, early today trounced Mr Neil Hamilton, the Tory former minister accused of corruption, by taking his hitherto safe seat of Tatton in Cheshire.
In one of several stunning defeats for high profile Conservatives, the former BBC war correspondent won with over 29,300 votes to Mr Hamilton's 18,277.
Also defeated was Sir Marcus Fox, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee and one of the Establishment grandees of the Tory Party, who was ejected ignominiously by a 24 year old Labour councillor.
Mr Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor sacked by John Major after the debacle of sterling being ejected from the ERM, lost Harrogate to the Liberal Democrats.
Rupert Allason, the MP who as Nigel West wrote spy books, lost his Torbay seat to the Liberal Democrats by just 12 votes.
