No change in Sussex - again. After months of campaigning, millions of pounds spent and thousands of trees pulped for election leaflets, not one seat changed hands last Thursday.

Once again the county will be represented in the House of Commons by ten Tories, five Labour members and one Liberal Democrat.

Before May 5 Sussex was an overwhelmingly Conservative county and today it remains unremittingly Tory.

Even in Arundel and South Downs, where Tory frontbencher Howard Flight was sacked just before the election, replacement candidate Nick Herbert won with almost 50 per cent of the vote.

In many seats the Conservatives continue to dominate with such huge majorities that, as the joke goes, they would win if they put up a monkey with a blue rosette.

Some would say the dull results reflected a dull campaign but even though the full-time score stayed the same there were some nail-biting moments and interesting undercurrents.

Few were willing to bet on Labour holding on to its three seats in Brighton and Hove.

All eyes were on Hove and Portslade, where Labour's Celia Barlow clung on to Ivor Caplin's former seat with a majority of 420.

The symbolism of the seat was set in stone when Labour won it in 1997 and Tony Blair described it as the moment he realised he would become Prime Minister.

Last year Mr Caplin stunned local Labour colleagues by announcing his retirement from the Commons only months before an expected election.

The imposition of an all-woman shortlist further delayed the selection of a replacement. By the time Ms Barlow was finally named Labour candidate in January, her Tory opponent, Nicholas Boles, had already been campaigning for 18 months.

Mr Boles, who has been tipped for high office in a future Conservative government, ran a high-profile campaign and as election day approached many were convinced he would overturn Labour's 3,171 majority by a whisker.

Ms Barlow was boosted by visits from Mr Blair, his deputy John Prescott and Health Secretary John Reid.

The anti-war threat from Respect evaporated, helped by Ms Barlow's stated opposition to the invasion, and popular local Lib Dem candidate Paul Elgood, who increased his vote by almost nine per cent, took votes off the Tories as well as Labour.

In Brighton Pavilion and Kemptown, Labour candidates David Lepper and Des Turner lost support to the Greens and Lib Dems.

Their re-election can be attributed in part to their anti-war stance and a perception that they were not Blairite careerists obsessed with toeing the party line.

The city council's Labour leaders believe a city-wide feel-good factor also helped shore up their party's vote.

In 2009 all three of the city's seats will be well within striking distance of the Conservatives, although it is interesting to note that last week all three Tory candidates polled a smaller share of the vote than they did in 2001.

The size of the Green vote, if it continues to grow at the astonishing rate it did last week, could make all the difference, as could the demographic factors that helped Labour win in 1997.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in Sussex on election night was in Crawley, where Labour's Laura Moffatt saw her 6,770 majority slashed to 37.

Mrs Moffatt fell to her knees and burst into tears as she was pronounced the winner after 15 hours of counting. She said Labour had lessons to learn.

The closeness of the result suggested she had underestimated the strength of the campaign by Tory candidate Henry Smith, the high-profile leader of West Sussex County Council. Councillor Smith said the removal of the accident and emergency department from Crawley Hospital and concerns about travellers contributed to the 8.5 per cent swing from Labour to Conservative - the biggest in the UK - which has made Crawley the country's most marginal seat.

In Eastbourne, the Conservatives shrugged off the Lib Dems but their majority was reduced to 1,124.

The Tories struck a chord with voters' concerns about bed-blocking in Eastbourne District General Hospital and crime and immigration.

But the Lib Dems picked up votes from the Tories and Labour and Eastbourne will be among the party's top five target seats at the next election, when boundary changes are expected to further eat away at the Tory base.

In Hastings and Rye Labour's Michael Foster saw his fragile majority of 4,308 more than halved.

His resignation from a junior Government post over Iraq may have been as crucial to his holding on to the seat as his high profile.

Large swathes of Sussex might remain solidly and predictably Conservative.

But after May 5 the county contains several knife-edge marginals, the results of which will be key to determining who forms the next Government.

Dreadful as it might sound, the campaign starts here.