ONLY Labour’s Fortress Blackburn stayed red on Thursday as Boris’s blue tide swept across East Lancashire.

The Conservatives held on to Rossendale and Darwen, Pendle and Ribble Valley and seized Hyndburn and Burnley.

It was a night of disaster for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party across East Lancashire with even his political aide Kate Hollern’s majority being reduced.

The biggest shock came in Burnley as opposition health spokeswoman Julie Cooper was unseated by Antony Higginbotham who became its first Conservative MP for 109 years.

But the Tories reclaiming of Hyndburn, Labour since 1992, by their young candidate Sara Britcliffe was another big sign of the scale of the party’s success in demolishing the ‘Red Wall’ of the North.

Andrew Stephenson, who held Pendle comfortably turning it from a marginal with a majority of 1,279 to a seat with a 6,186 cushion, summed it up neatly.

He said: “I’m looking forward to getting on the train in Preston on Monday not just with my ministerial colleague Jake Berry from Rossendale and Darwen and my Ribble Valley MP friend Nigel Evans but with the new Tory MPs for Hyndburn and Burnley.

“I shall be delighted that we shall all be travelling down to London together.”

Defeated Conservative candidate in Blackburn Claire Gill brushed aside her personal disappointment to say: “I am delighted with the national result and with Boris Johnson returning to 10 Downing Street.

“I am going to go home a celebrate with a glass of champagne.”

It is clear that Mr Corbyn and Labour’s commitment to renegotiating a new withdrawal deal with the European Union and putting it to a second ‘People’s Vote’ went down extremely badly across East Lancashire which heavily supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

And that his radical agenda for change and ending austerity did not have the appeal he hoped it would have across the North.

It’s not just the size of Mr Johnson’s majority but the number of success in Labour heartlands that will dismay the party and its remaining MPs and delight the Prime Minister and his party strategists.

Their simple message of ‘Get Brexit Done’ worked with Leave supporters who had never voted Tory in their lives and now they have broken the Labour habit they may be difficult to get back.

Mrs Hollern refused to be drawn on what would happen next with Labour as Mr Corbyn confirmed he would not lead the party at the next election.

She said: “It is too early for that discussions. We need to go away and reflect on what happened in this campaign before we decide how to go forward.”

Cllr Alyson Barnes, the Labour candidate defeated by Mr Berry, said: “Clearly the Labour Party has much to learn from this election and I am absolutely certain that we will go about that right away.”

Mr Higginbotham - definitely the Conservative Party’s unexpected star of the big election show, said: “We’ve proved the doubters wrong and after more than 100 years we have delivered a Conservative MP for Burnley.

“I made a commitment to over the course of this campaign - I promised that if I was elected as member of parliament, I would go down to Westminster and vote to take us out of the EU and I have every intention of doing that.

“I want to thank all of the voters of Burnley - not just those who voted for me, but those who’s support I still have to earn.

“This was a historic vote for change in this area but it was also a vote to deliver on the referendum.”

Miss Britcliffe said: “People are completely fed up with what’s gone on in the last three years.

“They want to get Brexit done and focus on what matters to them.

“People have voted on their priorities and that is to get Brexit done.”

Mr Berry, who saw his majority in Rossendale and Darwen increase from 3,216 two years ago to 9,572, said the results in his constituency and nationwide were ‘an endorsement of the positive Conservative agenda’.

He said: “What we are seeing everywhere around the country is the rejection of the politics of the hard left.”

Mr Evans, returned with a majority of 18,439, said: “At last, if this is right , we can finally restore trust in politics and Parliament and give them the Brexit they voted for over three years ago.”

Mrs Hollern’s admission that her party faces ‘difficult times ahead’ is a masterly understatement. It is now very divided itself.

Those MPs who called for Mr Corbyn to quit will be looking for a more moderate alternative to his left-wing programme.

His supporters will claim the problem was that Labour’s manifesto, heavy with nationalisation pledges and spending commitments, was just not radical enough to cut through the Brexit fog.

But it is not going to be all plain sailing for Mr Johnson and the Conservatives. The simplicity of their message may yet come back to bite them.

If they do not ‘Get Brexit Done’ and fast, those new Tory voters stolen from Labour’s heartlands my get disillusioned with their new party of choice.

And if leaving the European Union proves a disaster and hits them in the pocket they may get very angry indeed.

Then Mrs Hollern may have a key role to play in explaining how Blackburn Labour kept the blue tide at bay and how not just to stop it lapping over her constituency’s ramparts but turn it back across the town’s East Lancashire neighbours.