Jamie Reed has insisted to Labour Party members in Copeland that their best days are still to come.

The man whose resignation triggered the Copeland by-election has wished his Conservative successor, Trudy Harrison, well in her new job.

In a statement to the News & Star, Mr Reed, who quit Parliament to take on a new role at Sellafield, said: “I’d like to thank every Labour voter for turning out and I congratulate Trudy on her victory. I wish her the very best of luck.

“Over the last 12 years, every Labour voter in Copeland has had a role to play in what we achieved: new nuclear policy and the Moorside project, the new West Cumberland Hospital, the University of Cumbria, the Uclan medical school, Westlakes School, the impending Whitehaven education campus, Energus, the Construction & Skills Centre, Nuclear College and the UTC, the National Nuclear Lab, Cleator Moor Health Centre, 30,000 new dentistry places, Albion Square in Whitehaven, the Dalton Cumbria facility at Westlakes Science Park, flood defences in Keswick and much more.

“Thanks to the support of Labour voters and the hard work of Labour councillors, we have set west Cumbria on a course of unparalleled success and opportunity.

“Our best days really are ahead of us - although it may not seem like that at the time.

“To all those people who made this possible, I repeat the words of Ted Kennedy spoken at the moment of his most difficult defeat: ‘For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die’.”

Meanwhile, Mr Reed blasted shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti after she claimed voters in the seat had been neglected by Labour.

He suggested Baroness Chakrabarti was “the epitome of what Labour voters just rejected” in a series of tweets directed at the Labour peer.

Baroness Chakrabarti used an interview on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show to blame factors such as the media, disunity in the party and the poor weather for Labour’s by-election defeat.