The UK Independence Party appeared this morning to be the main beneficiary of a disastrous set of results for Labour in the European elections.

A collapse in support for the ruling party after the MPs’ expenses row led to increases in the share of the votes for all smaller parties, with the UKIP adding an extra MEP to its existing tally of 12.

The anti-EU party gained its first seat in Wales, retained its seats in the Eastern region, the South East and Yorkshire and the Humber and increased its share of the vote by 0.5 per cent. The party overtook Labour to come second behind the Tories, with the Lib Dems coming fourth.

With all the English, Welsh and Scottish results in, the Tories had polled 27.7 per cent, UKIP came second with 16.5 per cent, with Labour a dismal third on 15.7 per cent, down 7 percentage points, its worst ever result. The Lib Dems had 13.7 per cent of the vote, with the Greens up by 2.4 per cent on 8.6 per cent and BNP on 6.2 per cent.

The Lib Dems' share of the vote was down 1.2 per cent, but the Tories were up 1 per cent on their 2004 result, showing that not all the major parties have been punished by the electorate for the MPs' expenses scandal.

The first result came from the North East, in Labour's heartlands, and gave a flavour of the night to come. No seats changed hands but Labour's share of the vote fell massively from 34 per cent to 25 per cent, with the Tories up 1.2 per cent in second place on 20 per cent, the Lib Dems marginally down to come in third on 18 per cent and UKIP fourth on 15 per cent, up by 3 percentage points.

In the Eastern Region the Tories held their three seats with its share of the vote up 0.4 per cent, UKIP kept its two, Labour kept one but saw its share of the vote fall 5.8 per cent, and the Lib Dems kept one. The Greens increased their share of the vote by 3.2 percentage points although they failed to win a seat.

In Yorkshire and the Humber Labour saw its share of the vote fall by 7.5 per cent while UKIP increased its vote by nearly 3. The Tories kept two seats, Labour lost one to the BNP, the Lib Dems held one.

The UKIP's one black spot last night was in the East Midlands, where its vote collapsed from 25 per cent to 16.4 per cent and it lost one of its two parliamentary seats to the Liberal Democrats. Labour was down 4.1 per cent to hold its single seat, and the Tories were up 3.8 per cent to hold their two.

In the West Midlands however, UKIP gained a seat at the expense of Labour.

In the South West Labour came sixth, behind UKIP and the Greens, and lost its only European seat in the region to the Tories.

The collapse of the Labour vote, mirroring its performance in the local elections, led to the party coming fourth, fifth or sixth in several areas around the country and losing five seats.

The Tories topped the poll in Wales, gaining their first MEP since 1918 as Labour’s vote collapsed by 12 percentage points and it lost one of its two seats.

The Tories had already won one MEP seat in Scotland while keeping most of their MEP seats across England and retaining their share of the vote. David Mundell, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, said: "This European election result is a disaster for Labour in Scotland."

Labour’s vote collapsed in several areas of Scotland, to the benefit of the Tories and the SNP. The SNP reinforced its dominant position over Labour in Scottish politics, taking easily the largest share of the vote, on 29.1 per cent to Labour's 20.8 per cent. The Nationalists failed however to pull off the sensational coup of winning a third Scottish seat in Brussels, out of the six available in Scotland.

The Greens pulled off a sound performance in Scotland, winning 7.3 per cent of the vote — not enough, however, to give them the reward of sending an MEP to Brussels. Across England the party was facing a frustrating set of results, its share of the vote up by nearly a third but with no new European Parliament seats to show for it.

In Eastern England, the party was comfortably in first place within the city of Norwich, taking a quarter of all votes cast, but narrowly missed claiming a seat despite a vote share of almost 9 per cent across the region, up from 5.6 per cent in 2004.

Rupert Read, the lead Green candidate, said the result was "very frustrating. We did what we thought was enough but it wasn’t and we narrowly missed out. It was very close."

He said that the regional party would now turn its attention to the Westminster by-election in Norwich North, triggered by the resignation last week of Ian Gibson, the Labour MP who was disciplined by the party’s "star chamber" after being caught up in the expenses scandal.

In the vast South East England region the Greens beat Labour into fifth place with 11.6 per cent of the vote, up 3.8 per cent, while in London the Greens came in fourth ahead of UKIP with a 10.9 per cent vote share, up by 2.5 per cent, but neither result was enough to secure the party an extra seat.

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