FORMER Test Valley Borough Council leader Roy Perry has lost his seat in the European Parliament with the UK Independence Party doing even better in the South East than in the country as a whole.

But Mr Perry said this week he had been 'psychologically prepared' for the result after he was dropped to sixth on the Tory list under the election's proportional representation system.

With one less seat this year due to the EU's expansion and the Tories dropping from five seats to four, it left Mr Perry two positions adrift from being re-elected.

Labour lost one seat - dropping down from two to one - and UKIP gained one seat and now has two seats in the South East region.

In terms of votes cast UKIP came second to the Conservatives although it now has the same number of seats as the Liberal Democrats, who ran in third ahead of Labour.

Mr Perry said: "I am of course disappointed not to retain my seat in the European Parliament.

"However, since I was given sixth place on the Conservative list over a year ago, I have known the chances of being re-elected were very slim, especially as the South East region went down from 11 to 10 members."

He added: "The Conser-vative policy towards Europe is correct in arguing for a flexible Europe, but we would be barking mad if we thought we should go down the UKIP route of advocating withdrawal."

But re-elected South East UKIP MEP Nigel Farage said the party was now a serious force in British politics.

"We are looking forward to many battles ahead, starting with the EU constitution," he said.

Of those parties in the South East region that won seats in the election, the results were:

Conservatives 776,370 (35.2 per cent), down 9.3 per cent - four seats; UKIP 431,111 (19.5 per cent), up 9.8 per cent - two seats; Lib/Dems 338,342 (15.3 per cent), same as last time - two seats; Labour 301,398 (13.7), down six per cent - one seat; Green 173,351 (7.9 per cent), up 0.4 per cent - one seat.

Nationally UKIP won around 16 per cent of the vote but in the South East it did even better with 19.5 per cent share of the vote.

When the voting is broken down to the Test Valley, UKIP also came second to the Tories with 6,407 votes compared with their 13,119. The Lib/Dems came third with 5,797, with Labour trailing in fourth with 2,829.