Former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said it could be the end of the two-party system at Westminster after a triumphant night for the Brexit Party.

Ms Widdecombe was elected for the Brexit Party in the South West of England as the Conservatives and Labour suffered a series of heavy blows.

“I am very pleased to have been elected, not for me, but the Brexit Party,” she said. “We’ve only been around six weeks and we’ve topped the polls decisively. There was only one reason ever to vote for the Brexit Party and that was to get Brexit.”

She added: “Tonight the nation has sent another message to Westminster, which says very clearly, ‘We want to leave’.

“We did that in 2016 and we are telling you again. My message to Westminster is, ‘Get us Brexit by October 31 or face what we have done tonight in a General Election’.

“Whoever is the next Prime Minister has got to give us a clear, firm, undisputed Brexit. That is the mission of that Prime Minister and any Prime Minister who does not deliver that is going to kill off the Conservative Party.

“It is a miserable business watching today’s Conservative Party. I can’t look at that, that is their problem. What I have got to look at is delivering Brexit – the will of the British people.

“That is this party’s mission and that is what we are going to accomplish and I cannot waste time worrying about what the other parties are doing.”

On the two-party system she added: “I am not yet ready to say this is definitely the end but if they don’t deliver Brexit I genuinely believe it is the end.

“I am not fearful now that Brexit won’t happen, I would have been a couple of months ago, particularly when Mrs May was offering every last concession to Labour.

“But that abject surrender failed and so I am now quite confident that after the message that has gone out tonight that should at last focus minds in Westminster.”