General election: John Lamont retains Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk seat

The Conservative incumbent won with 25,747 votes, 5,246 votes more than his closest challenger, the SNP’s Calum Kerr, who earned 20,599.

Liberal Democrat Jenny Marr came third with 4,287 votes, and Labour’s Ian Davidson finished fourth with 2,513.

Following his defeat, Calum Kerr said: “I think that we came into this as a long way second favourite and I think we’ve done exceptionally well. I think the campaign resonated with a lot of people, we had a lot of first-time SNP voters, so I think we’ve done great.

“You can hear another cheer in the background because all across Scotland the SNP has had success.

“I’m proud of our campaign, it was a record vote, we just need to build on it, because obviously John’s vote was higher.”

John Lamont said of his electoral success: “I’m very pleased to have been re-elected, clearly it was always going to be a close contest and I’m very pleased the majority is as large as it is.

“I’ll continue to work as hard as I can on behalf of everybody in the Borders, regardless of whether they voted for me or not.

“I thought it was going to be very, very tight and if you speak to my campaign team, they’ll tell you I was repeatedly saying it was going to be a very close contest, so I’m surprised the majority is as big as it is.”