Election 2017: Conservative treasury team halved after top ministers lose seats

Tories suffer catastrophic result as Britain wakes to hung parliament

Jane Ellison was a junior minister in the department of health before she was named financial secretary to the treasury last year (PA)

The Conservative treasury team has suffered a crippling blow as nearly half of its ministers lost their seats on election night.

Financial secretary to the Treasury Jane Ellison was the first to lose her seat in Battersea, after Labour’s Marsha De Cordova took 25,292 votes to Ms Ellison's 22,876 - a majority of 2,416 and a swing of 10 per cent.

Ms Ellison was a junior minister in the department of health before she was appointed to the Treasury last year.

George Osborne said her unexpected departure would require "a very big post mortem", after she rose swiftly up the ranks since her election to Parliament in 2010.

Next to go was cabinet office minister Ben Gummer, one of the main authors of the Conservatives' 2017 election manifesto.

Mr Gummer saw his 3,700 majority in Ipswich overturned by Labour, whose candidate Sandy Martin won by just 831 votes.

He received 23,393 votes compared to Ms Martin's 24,224 - a 10.3 per cent increase in Labour's vote since 2015.

The team, headed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, is now left with just two remaining junior ministers, but they were not the only prominent politicians staring down the barrel of defeat.

Liberal Democrats' deputy leader Nick Clegg was unseated in Sheffield Hallam, and SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson lost his Moray constituency.

With just a handful of results to come in, the election appears to have been a gamble from Prime Minister Theresa May that has now backfired. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and even some Conservative MPs have implicitly called for her resignation.