Labour's Mayo candidate falls short in election bid
Labour candidate Claire Tighe
A woman who was raised in Ballina narrowly missed out on a seat in the UK General Election.
Claire Tighe was in the running for a seat for incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in the Spelthorne Constituency in Surrey which is traditionally a Labour stronghold.
Tighe has been hoping to become the first Labour MP elected there since 1945, as well as the constituency’s first female MP.
However, she lost out by 1,600 votes to Conservative candidate Lincoln Jopp, a rare bright spark for the Tory party in a landslide victory for Labour. Tighe received 12,448 votes to Jopp's 14,048.
Tighe was born in Ealing but then raised in Ballina where she attended St Mary’s Secondary School. Her parents, her father Martin and her late mother Ann, are from Ballycastle and members of the Tighe family still live in Ballycastle.
Claire returned to London to work in politics after attending University College Dublin.
