At the start of the evening Labour had one MEP in the south west, a legacy of the 2004 European elections. By the time the count was in it not only had none, it had all but vanished from the political map of the region.

The European elections confirmed UKIP as second party in the south west, pushing the Liberal Democrats, whose traditional heartland the region it is, into third place.

But it was Labour’s virtual extinction as a political force that was the talk of the election count at Poole civic centre in Dorset. In a region of just over four million eligible voters, the number of Labour supporters who cast their vote for the party would not even fill Wembley Stadium.

Rumours swept the council chamber, where candidates and their agents were corralled before declaration of the result. A round robin email from Tory central office claimed Labour had been pushed into sixth place in Cornwall, behind the Greens and Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish Nationalists. Sure enough, there were gasps as a screen showed the governing party poll 5000 fewer votes than the Green Party.

The Liberal Democrats, who might have hoped to pick up some of the disillusioned Labour voters, tried to put a brave face on their third place, well behind UKIP. Justine McGuinness said: “Traditionally we don’t do as well in the European election as the General Election. As far as we’re concerned the real story of the night is the collapse of Labour.”

If there was any comfort for Labour it was that they managed to come second in one district. Unfortunately, it was Gibraltar, tacked onto the south west as an afterthought.

Glyn Ford, who has lost his seat after 25 years as a Labour MEP, said: “Gordon Brown has to take a share of the blame because he is the Prime Minister, but this is not a general election. This is a mid-term protest vote and I don’t see it as a ringing endorsement of the policies of UKIP or the Greens.

”Unfortunately nobody votes on the record of Labour MEPs they vote on national politics. There is an important job to be done in Europe, the problem is getting that across to the voters of Great Britain.”

Despite the talk of unhappy voters turning to fringe parties to register their protest, the real beneficiary were not BNP or eccentric independents like Katie Hopkins, the former Apprentice candidate. Instead it was UKIP.

In any normal election neither the party’s lead candidate Trevor Colman, a veteran former police officer, or his number two, the 10th Earl of Dartmouth, would have stood much of a chance. Mr Colman is a Cornish man-of-few-words while the aristocratic Lord Dartmouth makes David Cameron look like a chav.

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