Fabian Hamilton has won a fifth term as Labour MP for Leeds North East with 47.9 per cent per cent of the vote, handing Conservative candidate Simon Wilson a heavier defeat than the Tories suffered in 2010.
Improving on his majority of 4,545 votes by 2,705, Mr Hamilton - whom the Leeds Jewish Representative Council said “has always been very supportive” of his community - once again secured the safe Labour seat, which he first won from the Tories in 1997.
The 60-year-old grandson of a rabbi had previously accused his party leader Ed Miliband of “betraying” Israel with his position on the Gaza conflict, which he said had made it harder for the party’s candidates to be elected in areas with a high proportion of Jewish voters.
Labour backbenchers led the campaign to vote to recognise Palestine in last October’s vote, but Mr Hamilton rebelled and abstained.
His constituency includes the suburbs of Moortown and Alwoodley, where many of Leeds’s 8,000 Jews live and where most of the community’s synagogues are located.
He told the JC last month that it was only voters’ personal loyalty to him that prevented Jews - who make up 5.3 per cent of the electorate - from abandoning Labour. This seems to have been the case, with Mr Hamilton reversing the national trend away from his party.
Mr Wilson, 48, was contesting his second election having come fifth in the 2012 Rotherham by-election. He earned 15,887 votes.
Liberal Democrat Aqila Choudhry, standing for the second time in Leeds North East, just held on to the party’s deposit after her share of the vote fell by 14.3 per cent.
Ukip rose to third place as candidate Warren Hendon secured 3,706 votes, while Emma Carter - the Greens’ first candidate in Leeds North East since 1992 - held on to her deposit, missing out on knocking the Lib Dems into fifth place by just 28 votes.
Turnout in the constituency held steady from 2010, at around 70 per cent.
