Westminster: A family affair?

Family politics has won the day in the general election with the creation of several new dynasties.

Ed Balls, the chancellor’s former aide and husband of Labour MP Yvette Cooper, was successfully returned for the Normanton constituency.

He is tipped for early promotion, with the couple set to become a husband and wife ministerial team sometime during this parliament.

Fellow Brownite Ed Miliband, whose brother David is the MP for South Shields, also enters the House of Commons.

He too is expected to land a ministerial position early in this parliament.

There are also some father and son acts in Westminster following last night's general election.

Nick Hurd, the son of the former Conservative foreign secretary Lord Hurd, enters the Commons for the first time after winning the safe Tory seat of Ruislip Northwood.

But there were defeats which deprived parliament of two family affairs.

Boris Johnson's father Stanley, the Conservative candidate for Teignbridge, failed to unseat the Liberal Democrats.

And Labour's Ann Cryer saw her son John defeated in Horncurch, where the Conservatives won back the seat they lost to the left-winger in 1997.