Atkins fended off a strong challenge from the Respect Party to retain his seat by just seven votes. He remained a Labour councillor until 2010, when he stood down; aged 93, he was the oldest member of the council. In August 2015, aged 99, during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign, Atkins gave a speech introducing Corbyn at an event in Preston. Exclaiming "We love you!", he told the audience of several hundred people: "Jeremy Corbyn is not New Labour he is Real Labour." (Atkins' daughter, Charlotte, had in fact been elected under the New Labour era of the party.) He was made Honorary President of Momentum for Central Lancashire. Atkins voted to leave the European Union (which had succeeded the EEC) in the 2016 referendum, later declaring: "It wasn't because of immigrants. The most important thing is our sovereignty." Personal life and death In 1950, Atkins married Jesse Scott; the union ended in divorce in 1979. The couple had three sons and two twin daughters, Charlotte and Liz. At the two 1974 general elections, Atkins' stepson, Michael Atkins, contested Blackpool South, and Michael's wife, Kathleen E. Knight, stood in Fylde South, both as unsuccessful Labour candidates. His daughter, Charlotte Atkins, was the Labour MP for Staffordshire Moorlands from 1997 until 2010. Atkins married his second wife, Elizabeth Alison Wildgoose in 2012, who was more than forty years his junior, shortly after she was elected to Ashton ward on Preston council. The couple lived in Frenchwood, Preston, with a dog, Rosie. His recreations were listed in Who's Who as "jazz, dancing, walking, local and national politics, connoisseur of good coffee"; he was an active ballroom dancer to late in life. Following the death of John Freeman on 20 December 2014, Atkins became the oldest surviving former MP. He celebrated his 100th birthday in June 2016, attributing his long life to "good genes, an active lifestyle, and wild Atlantic salmon" in his diet. Interviewed by the Lancashire Post to mark the occasion, he added there was "some luck too", noting, "I've escaped assassination as an MP." On 30 August 2018, Atkins became the longest-lived MP ever, surpassing Theodore Taylor's record. Atkins died at his home in Preston on 30 December 2020, at the age of 104. He was survived by Elizabeth, his daughters Charlotte and Liz, and his stepson Donald (from his first marriage). Upon his death, his widow Elizabeth, who was still