IT felt like an historic moment.

As Priti Patel was confirmed as the MP for the new Witham constituency she thanked a raft of people, from the “amazing front line staff” at polling stations, she visited all 68 in the Witham constituency yesterday, to her family and supporters.

“Everyone has fought a clean, honest and good campaign, one that shows parliamentary democracy in a good light,” she said as she addressed the crowd at the count.

With 52.2 per cent of the vote it was a straightforward affair in the end for the Witham resident.

One of Ms Patel’s campaign aides, Jonathan Sheppard, said although some might have seen the constituency as safe Tory territory it was not treated as such by the party.

He said: “The efforts were put in make no mistake. It was not treated as a safe seat and we fought it like a seat that needed to be won off an opponent, nothing should be taken for granted in an election.”

Mr Sheppard vowed Ms Patel would put the Witham constituency on the map.

“We’ve been extremely active right across the new patch,” said Ms Patel’s election agent Tom Cunningham.

Soul searching, blame, excuses or valid points.

Once the results were digested Witham’s General Election candidates reflected on their standing and while some had cause for celebration others were in less joyous mood.

James Abbott, the Green Party candidate who has lived in and around Witham for over 40 years, is a stalwart of local government.

The 49-year-old has spent more than a decade as a Braintree district councillor and consistently campaigns on local issues.

He finished in last place out of the five candidates in the Witham constituency with 1,419 votes.

He said the televised leaders’ debates in the run up to polling day hampered his party and may have contributed to him not gaining a bigger share of the Witham vote.

“There’s only so much you can do locally in terms of knocking on doors,” he said. “If every evening all people are hearing about is the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dem, clearly that is a major obstacle for us to overcome.”

He admitted it’s always the way in a General Election that the so-called ‘big three’ have a head start on the other parties because of the coverage in the media.

“I’m sure if Caroline Lucas, our party leader, had been given half an hour on TV people would be talking about the ‘Lucas factor’ and not the ‘Clegg factor’.”

Mr Abbott said he was not making excuses and he thought his result was “very reasonable”.

He said it was the fifth time he had stood and each time he had improved.

“At this rate I’ll be an MP in about 300 years time,” he said.

Margaret Phelps, who took 9,252 votes from the 46,940 cast in the Witham constituency, was “very pleased” with her second place finish to winner Priti Patel.

But she may have wondered if she could have got a little closer to Ms Patel’s 24,448 votes.

She said: “We had some problems with our election leaflets being delivered. We know some we not delivered to Tiptree and Coggeshall and the wrong leaflets were delivered in Silver End.

“Vast swathes of the constituency were not delivered to and it makes for an unfair contest.”

She said the Lib Dem’s regional organiser would certainly investigate what happened as she, and other Liberal candidates, had “worked our socks off” but the Lib Dem message did not get through.

The Liberal Democrats being strong in the Colchester Borough wards of the Witham constituency were to blame for Labour being forced into third, according to Labour candidate John Spademan.

The Stanway resident admitted he thought he would have done better than the 8,656 votes he received.

“The Lib Dems do well in the Colchester Boroughs and they worked hard in those wards and it served them well,” he said.

“I’m disappointed for my team who were out with me in the village but there are signs of encouragement for the local elections next time around.”