Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has seen his majority of more than 10,000 overturned in Welwyn Hatfield as the seat fell to the Liberal Democrats.

Shapps, a former president of the BBYO Jewish youth group, had held the seat since 2005. He has held a wide range of cabinet positions, including housing minister, minister without portfolio, minister for international development, transport minister, home secretary, business secretary and secretary of state for defence.

His defenestration will be a loss for Jewish voices in Parliament, though other new MPs like Josh Simons, the newly elected Labour representative in Makerfield, have entered the House for the first time.

"I feel totally Jewish; I am totally Jewish,” Shapps told the JC after he was elected. “I don't eat pork, we only buy kosher meat and we don't mix meat and milk. I like being Jewish and I married a Jewish girl. It's like a way of life and it's good to be able to instil some of that sense of being in your kids.

"All of that makes me seem as though I am quite observant but actually the flipside of this is I don't know if there is a God or not. But one thing I am absolutely certain of is that God wouldn't care if you were Jewish or Christian or Muslim."

Shapps's political inspiration has long been Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish-born prime minister who shared his Conservative beliefs. "He was very enlightened,” Shapps said. “He made sure that the working classes had the vote; and this was in the days before real enfranchisement."

Shapps’s exit from Parliament comes amid a collapse in support for the Conservatives. A number of big beasts have been dumped by the electorate, including Penny Mordaunt, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Tory deputy chairman Jonathan Gullis and Chief Whip Simon Hart.