RESIDENTS in Cardenden and Kinglassie will again have Peter Grant as their MP after his resounding victory in Thursday's General Election.

Mr Grant, the SNP candidate for the Glenrothes, took home over half of the votes to secure a more than comfortable victory.

Having first won the seat in 2015, he then successfully defended it in 2017 and made it three times lucky with his latest electoral success.

The latest victory came with a total of 21,234 votes, with Labour's Pat Egan following in second place with 9,477 votes, Conservative Amy Thomson winning 6,920 votes, Liberal Democrat Jane Ann Liston accumulating 2,639 votes and Victor Farrell, the Brexit Party candidate, securing 1,276 votes.

Turn out for the Glenrothes constituency was 63.29

After his victory was announced, Peter Grant thanked those behind his campaign.

"Over fifty per cent of the constituency voted SNP tonight," he said. "A massive thank you to the campaign team and thanks to all who went out in appalling weather. You have surpassed yourself.

"This is a clear and resounding message from the electorate that we reject Brexit and a decisive right-wing Tory Government in Westminster.

"I look forward to second Independence Referendum in 2020 where Scotland’s voice will be heard."

Before the declaration had been made, Mr Grant told the Times that it had been a "very encouraging" campaign.

“We had a lot of teams out knocking doors across the constituency and reports back is there have been a significant number of voters have decided to vote SNP and have not before,” he said.

“Staff at polling stations were saying that people have come out to vote, who haven’t voted before. We have not had as hard a job as we thought we might have had to persuade people to come out and vote and that might be one of the reasons behind the exit poll.

“It was a pleasant surprise for the election in December. Polling station staff have been commenting about people coming in who have never voted. Not just young people, some people in their forties and fifties so it has got to be encouraging.

“I tend not to put a lot of scope on the majority. At the end of the day, if you get a majority, one person goes to Parliament. A lot will depend on turn out. I always say to the activists the most important goal is to get over the line. Everything more than that is nice but the system is designed so that winning by one vote is losing by one vote."

Conceding defeat, Labour candidate Pat Egan thanked his family and team for their support.

"I would most like to thank the team who have been out in the up to Christmas and I would like to thank their partners for that as well," he said. "It has been a really hard night. We need to dust ourselves down and pick ourselves up and look at where we went wrong.

Amy Thomson, the Conservative candidate, said it had been a "difficult and cold December" and thanked her team.

The Liberal Democrat's Jane Ann Liston said work would continue.

"I would like to thank all the people who voted in this constituency – voting is important," she said. "We put forward a positive campaign. We want to stay in the UK, we want to stay in the European Union. Our party will be back and we will strive to do this and put forward our ideas."

In his speech after the results, Brexit Party candidate Victor Farrel said he wanted respect for the common people.

"I am a Jonny come lately to politics," he said. "I believe we should be a UK outside Europe. We will not be silenced. The Christian Voice will be heard in years to come and I will dedicate the rest of my life in making it so."