Keir Starmer’s Labour wins general election — as it happened

He quickly clambered into his car and is heading for Downing Street. He is expected to make a speech at Downing Street at about 10.30am.

The fourth pro-Gaza independent has been elected, in Birmingham Perry Barr.

Ayoub Khan, who beat the Labour candidate Khalid Mahmood by just over 500 votes, will join Shockat Adam, Iqbal Mohamed, and Adnan Hussain in a pro-Palestinian core on the green benches.

Perry Barr is the northwest quadrant of Birmingham and is very ethnically mixed. It includes the traditional heart of the black community in Handsworth and Lozells, the main centre for Sikhs near Sandwell borough, and many Muslim neighbourhoods, including Aston.

There is a white population further north towards the edge of the city, in Perry Barr itself, but overall it amounts to 21 per cent — only two constituencies anywhere have fewer. The constituency has been Conservative as recently as 1970-74, but until tonight has been very safe for Labour.

President Zelensky congratulated Sir Keir Starmer on his “convincing” election win.

“Ukraine and the United Kingdom have been and will continue to be reliable allies through thick and thin,” said Zelensky.

“We will continue to defend and advance our common values of life, freedom, and a rules-based international order.

“I wish the incoming government every success both in domestic affairs and in solidifying the UK’s leadership on the world stage.

“I look forward to working closely together on strengthening the Ukraine-UK partnership and restoring international peace and security.”

Sir Keir Starmer will appoint his whole cabinet today, Labour’s national campaign chief has said.

Pat McFadden told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Keir Starmer will get on with appointing his cabinet, which we expect to be done by the end of today.

“Certainly the whole cabinet. That cabinet will meet tomorrow. And he will have to quickly allocate those responsibilities, give his new cabinet their marching orders and then there’s big international events coming.

“We have a Nato summit next week. That will be his first moment on the international stage. And while he’s doing that, he will want his new cabinet to get on with it pretty quickly.”

Rishi Sunak is set to make a statement at 10.30am, Downing Street has said. He will then go to the Palace to tender his resignation to the King.

Sir Keir Starmer will then see the King and be formally invited to form a government. He will be driven a mile to Downing Street, where he will address the nation at about 12:20pm.

Sunak prepares to thank party staffers for their campaign efforts at Conservative Party headquarters

BEN CAWTHRA/LNP

Rishi Sunak has arrived at the Conservative Party headquarters in Westminster, central London.

He is expected to thank Conservative Party staff for their efforts during the campaign. Sunak will then leave for Downing Street before seeing the King and tendering his resignation.

A “Starmer tsunami” has swept over the Scottish National Party, the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has said.

The SNP has lost 38 seats and is down to nine.

Speaking to Sky News, Flynn said the outcome had been a “very bleak election for the party” and a “huge number of very valued colleagues” had been lost.

Flynn said the SNP needed a “robust, frank discussion” about how to fix the party’s troubles.

When asked if John Swinney was the right man to continue leading the party, Flynn said: “There’s nobody better to rebuild the SNP from the small foundations that we now have than John Swinney.”

One of the removal trucks parked outside Sunak’s residence on Downing Street

PA

A white removal van has arrived outside 10 Downing Street as Rishi Sunak prepares to step down as prime minister

A white van, with the company name “Euro Self Drive: van and truck hire”, is parked around the side of No 10.

Nearby there is a larger unbranded white truck parked in front of the van with its back door open.

The turnout at the general election is on track to be the lowest for more than 20 years.

After 630 of 650 results had been declared, the turnout figure stood at 59.8 per cent. This compares with an overall turnout of 67.3 per cent at the last election in 2019.

If the figure stays around 59.8 per cent, it would be the lowest turnout at a general election since 2001, when it was 59.4 per cent.

One reason voters may have stayed at home is because the result seemed like a foregone conclusion as polls consistently put Labour well ahead.

The outgoing home secretary James Cleverly has claimed the Conservative Party can bounce back, making comparisons with the Labour Party’s change in fortunes since the 2019 general election.

Speaking to Sky News, Cleverly said the party needed to “think about what our offer is to the British people”.

Cleverly said it was “incredibly difficult” to have seen his party lose so many seats. “The lesson I think my party should take from that, [election result] is that if we listen carefully to what the British people are telling us, then there is every reason to believe — just as Labour went from a very bad defeat to a victory — we could do likewise,” he said.

Cleverly refused to speak about his leadership ambitions.

An emotional Lord Kinnock has told Times Radio that he “did not expect to see” another Labour government in his lifetime.

He was speaking from the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall following a speech to activists from Sir Keir Starmer.

Kinnock, 82, was Labour leader for nine years from 1983 and lost to John Major in a surprising defeat in 1992, unpredicted by the polls.

After meeting the King, Sir Keir Starmer will set about appointing his cabinet, with two immediate holes to fill after the shadow ministers Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire failed to win their seats.

He will then be making calls to world leaders, before appointing the rest of his ministerial team over the weekend.

On Tuesday, Starmer heads to Washington to meet President Biden at a Nato summit, and will then host EU leaders at a meeting in the grand surrounds of Blenheim Palace the following week.

Truss leaving her count in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, after her defeat

JACOB KING/PA WIRE

Liz Truss has blamed Conservative losses on the Human Rights Act but admitted she was part of the reason her party lost.

The former prime minister, who lost her South West Norfolk seat, said she would “agree” that she was part of the Tory downfall.

But she said: “During our 14 years in power unfortunately we did not do enough to take on the legacy we had been left.”

Pointing to the Human Rights Act, she said: “That is one of the reasons we have ended up in the situation we have now.”

Asked if she would stay in Conservative politics, she said: “We’ve got a lot to think about, it’s been a very hectic few weeks.”

Labour party staffers were each given a token to claim one free drink as they arrived for their victory party at the Tate Modern in the early hours of the morning.

“It’s Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules in action already,” joked one of those present.

But by the time Sir Keir Starmer made his victory speech in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, the bar on the sixth floor of the museum had sold out of beer.

Several hundred Labour Party staff, volunteers and members packed into the sixth floor of the museum to watch the results come in overnight.

The loudest cheer of the night came when Penny Mordaunt lost her seat, reflecting the fact that she was the Conservative leadership contender that Labour feared the most.

“It felt like a football crowd,” a Labour aide said. “Every time a big Tory loss came in the crowd roared like they were celebrating a goal.”

The minister of state for Northern Ireland Steve Baker has lost his Wycombe seat to the Labour Party.

Baker lost to Labour Party candidate Emma Reynolds, who won the seat with a 4,591 majority.

When the election campaign was called he was criticised for not cancelling his holiday to Greece. And he said he would spend his time “skydiving, motorcycling and fast catamaran sailing” if he lost his seat.

He was a self-declared “hard man” of Brexit and was known for making Conservative prime ministers’ lives difficult. He backed Liz Truss in the July 2022 leadership contest and previously supported Boris Johnson in 2019.

Reynolds has shadowed Ed Miliband before but was never on Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench. She could be brought into government in Sir Keir Starmer’s first reshuffle.

Sir Keir Starmer has returned home for a few hours’ sleep before he travels to Buckingham Palace to see the King later.

He needs to “freshen up for going to see the King,” a close ally said.

The formal changeover of power is expected to start mid-morning with Rishi Sunak giving a resignation speech outside No 10 before travelling a mile down the road to formally resign as prime minister in an audience with the King.

Starmer will then be formally invited to form the next government in a meeting a Buckingham Palace, before giving his first speech as prime minister outside Downing Street.

Starmer is not nervous about his first meeting with the King as prime minister, a close ally said, but said nothing can prepare you for the first meeting.

The source said: “You can think about it and do everything you can to be ready for it but of course there’s ultimately nothing like actually doing it.”

Greg Hands, the former minister of state for trade and London, has lost his Chelsea & Fulham seat to the Labour Party’s candidate Ben Coleman by 152 seats.

He has previously served as chair of the Conservative Party in 2023 and has held many positions in government since his party came to power in 2010, including chief secretary to the Treasury from 2015 to 2016 and deputy chief whip from 2013 to 2015.

Coleman has been a councillor for Hammersmith & Fulham. This seat was expected to be tight, with Rishi Sunak visiting the area twice in the final two weeks of the campaign.

The constituency is the home of Kings Road, “Sloane Rangers” and even the fictional James Bond.

Liz Truss lost to the Labour candidate Terry Jermy

Liz Truss, the former Conservative Party prime minister who left office after just 49 days, has lost her seat.

She was defeated by the Labour Party in her seat of South West Norfolk by a margin of 630 votes.

She becomes the first former prime minister since Ramsay MacDonald to lose their seat. The former Labour PM was head of a national government in 1935 but after agreeing to stand down, lost at the subsequent election a short period later.

The Labour MP Jess Phillips has said this election campaign has been the worst she’s been involved in as protesters heckled her victory speech.

As the Birmingham Yardley MP stood up she was met with cries of “free Palestine” and “shame on you” and she eventually asked the returning officer to have them removed.

“I understand a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence.This election has been the worst election I have ever stood in,” she said, telling a story about an activist having slashed her tyres.

“Today I was to be joined by the family of Jo Cox who wanted to campaign with me and there is absolutely no way I could have allowed for them to see what was aggressive and violent in our democracy.”

Sir Keir Starmer kisses his wife, Victoria, during a victory rally at the Tate Modern

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Sir Keir Starmer turned to hug his wife, Victoria, and then punched the air when the exit poll showed he was on course to become prime minister at 10pm last night.

The pair were watching the results at a friend’s house in central London with a group of about a dozen aides and close friends.

While the rest of the group cheered loudly at the result, Starmer’s reaction was “more reflective”, according to one of those present.

They ate snacks from a buffet as they watched the results come through before Starmer left for his count in Camden.

David Cameron’s former seat of Witney has been won by the Liberal Democrats.

Charlie Maynard beat Robert Courts, the Conservative successor to Cameron in Witney, by 4,339 votes and with a swing of 15.2 per cent towards the Liberal Democrats.

Witney would usually be regarded as a safe Conservative seat and Rishi Sunak campaigned here in the final week of the election campaign.

Courts replaced Cameron in a by-election in 2016.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, has lost his seat in the Forest of Dean to the Labour Party by 278 votes.

Harper is the 11th cabinet member to lose his seat in this election, a record number.

Harper stood for the Conservative leadership in 2019 but was eliminated in the first round. This seat was first won by Labour in 1918 and it was held until 1970, with only one brief interruption. However, since the last large pit closed in 1965, the trend in the constituency has been steadily rightwards.

Keir Starmer was in his car driving across London to join Labour’s victory party when Rishi Sunak phoned him to concede defeat (Matt Dathan writes).

He was with his wife, Victoria, in the back of his Range Rover as he spoke to the outgoing prime minister at just before 4am in a phone call that lasted a few minutes, according to senior Labour sources.

Minutes later Starmer was being cheered to the rafters at a victory party for Labour staffers at the Tate Modern museum on the south bank of the Thames.

Hundreds of party staff were joined by Labour politicians old and new, including the former leader Neil Kinnock, the London mayor Sadiq Khan and a raft of London MPs.

Morgan McSweeney, the mastermind behind Starmer’s campaign, was among dozens of Labour aides in attendance as Starmer gave his victory speech in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, less than a mile from the South Bank where Tony Blair gave his victory speech in 1997.

Sir Liam Fox, the former international trade and defence secretary, has lost his seat to the Labour Party.

Fox, who has been an MP for North Somerset since 1992, lost his seat to Labour by only 639 votes to Labour’s candidate Sadik Al-Hassan.

Fox served as secretary for international trade from 2016 to 2019 and has previously stood in contests to be Conservative Party leader in 2005 and 2016.

Ross had resigned as leader of the Scottish Conservatives during the campaign

MICHAL WACHUCIK/PA

Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Tories, has lost his seat in Aberdeenshire North & Moray East, placing second with 12,513 behind Seamus Logan, the Scottish National Party candidate who won 13,455 votes.

Ross announced in the middle of his campaign that he would resign as leader of the Scottish Conservative Party after the election. This new seat is seen as the successor to the constituency of Banff & Buchan, as it contains 79 per cent of that seat compared with just 26 per cent of the former Moray constituency.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has hung on to his Ilford North seat by only 528 votes, seeing off a challenge from an independent candidate.

Streeting has played a prominent part in Sir Keir Starmer’s election campaign. He was running against the independent candidate Leanne Mohamad, who was campaigning on the Gaza war.

The constituency was previously known for its Jewish community, especially around Gants Hill. It is now only 33 per cent white and 43 per cent Asian.

Tom Tugendhat, Conservative leadership hopeful and former security minister, has held onto his Tonbridge & Malling seat.

Tugendhat won a significant majority of 11,166 and has represented the Kent constituency since 2015.
The army veteran supported Liz Truss for leader of the Conservative Party in 2022 and backed Michael Gove for leader in 2019.

He has refused to rule out running for leader of the Conservative Party when questioned by journalists about his leadership ambitions during the campaign.

Known as the minister for common sense in Rishi Sunak’s government, Esther McVey has been successful in holding on to her Tatton seat.

The former 2019 leadership hopeful has won the seat in northwest England with a majority of 1,136.

McVey is regarded as being on the right of the Conservative Party and is a supporter of the Thatcherite group Conservative Way Forward.

Tatton is probably the most affluent constituency in the northwest of England and Aston Martin sells more cars in Wilmslow than anywhere else. Their best-known MP was the independent Martin Bell who beat the Conservative Neil Hamilton in 1997.

Michael Gove’s former seat of Surrey Heath has been won by the Liberal Democrats.

Gove, a key figure during the Conservative Party’s 14 years in power, decided to stand down and Ed McGuinness, who works at JP Morgan, was selected to contest the seat for the Tories.

The seat previously has been regarded as a safe Conservative seat. Al Pinkerton, the Liberal Democrat candidate, won 21,387 votes, with a majority of 5,640.

Diane Abbott has won Hackney North & Stoke Newington for Labour with a sizable majority of over 15,000.

Despite her majority dropping from 29,000 at the last election, this is a statement win for Abbott after questions around whether she would be allowed to stand for Labour in the seat she has represented since 1987.

Last year, Abbott was suspended from Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party after she said that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience prejudice, but not racism “all their lives”.

Hackney North & Stoke Newington has a 13 per cent mainly Orthodox Jewish community concentrated around Stamford Hill.

Sir Keir Starmer addresses his supporters at a reception to celebrate his win in the election

SUZANNE PLUNKETT/REUTERS

“We did it,” Sir Keir Starmer has told a cheering crowd in central London.

The Labour leader is speaking after Rishi Sunak conceded that Labour had “won the general election”.

Starmer told supporters: “You campaigned for it, you fought for it — and now it has arrived. Change begins now.”

Starmer said the country was “waking up to the news” and would be “relieved that a weight had been lifted”.

“The sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day. Shining once again on a country with an opportunity after 14 years to get its future back,” he said.

We may be seeing some early signs of tactical voting — or at least the Lib Dems and Labour avoiding each other (Tom Calver writes).

In the 106 seats the Liberal Democrats were first or second in in 2019, they are by some stretch the largest party on 35 per cent to Labour’s 19 per cent. But in other seats, they were on just 6 per cent to Labour’s 41 per cent.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg was among the senior Tories who were unseated

JONATHAN BRADY/PA

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has lost his seat in Somerset North East & Hanham to the Labour candidate Dan Norris, who has been the mayor of West England since 2021 and is a former Labour MP for Wansdyke.

Norris won the seat with 20,739 votes and 40.6 per cent of the vote share — a substantial 5,319 votes ahead of the veteran backbencher and prominent Eurosceptic Rees-Mogg, who finished with 15,420 votes.

The seat was reformed at the boundary changes to encapsulate a mixture of Bristol suburbia, and was a Labour battleground throughout the election.

The results are still being counted, but it looks like the polls were right: Labour has won a landslide victory, and Sir Keir Starmer will be the prime minister after 14 years of Conservative-led government.

The overall story may be straightforward, but the data reveals a nuanced picture.

Read the full story by the Times data team here

Jeremy Hunt said the results were “a bitter pill to swallow”

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

Jeremy Hunt has retained his seat in Godalming & Ash with a narrow majority of 891 ahead of the Liberal Democrat Paul Follows.

He said that the results across the country were “a bitter pill to swallow” but that he was “proud” to have served under Rishi Sunak.

The former chancellor said: “Some Conservatives will wonder whether the scale of our crushing defeat is really justified but when you lose the trust of the electorate, all that matters is having the courage and humility to ask yourself why, so that you can earn it back again.”

He added: “Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are decent people and committed public servants who have changed the Labour Party for the better. Whatever our policy differences we all now need them to succeed.”

Rishi Sunak has won his seat in Richmond, Yorkshire, but declared: “The Labour Party has won this general election.”

He has called Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, to “congratulate him on his victory”.

During the prime minister’s victory speech, he thanked his constituents in Richmond & Northallerton in what he described as a “difficult night” for the Conservative Party.

He said: “Today power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, with good will on both sides that is something that will give us all confidence in our country’s stability and future.”

Sunak said the electorate had delivered a “sobering verdict tonight”. He said there was “much to learn and reflect on” and he took “responsibility” for the Conservatives’ losses.

He said he would now leave for London to leave his role as prime minister before returning to Richmond to be with his family.

Johnny Mercer, the former minister for veterans’ affairs, has lost his seat in Plymouth Moor View to the Labour candidate Fred Thomas, who took the seat with a total of 17,665 votes.

The former cabinet minister saw a vote share change of -31.7 percentage points, dropping to 12,061 votes from 26,831 in 2019.

Thomas, the successful Labour candidate is a veteran who served in the Royal Marines between 2016 and 2023. He was accused of lying about this by Mercer during the campaign, but denied any wrongdoing.

Richard Holden, Tory chairman, has scraped by with a narrow win in Basildon & Billericay, holding on by only 20 votes.

Holden’s decision to stand in this seat was controversial as since 2019 he had been the MP for North West Durham and he was accused by local Conservative members of imposing his candidacy on the association.

Holden won 12,905 votes, with the Labour candidate Alex Harrison narrowly behind with 12,885 votes.

Two more losses for the Tories as education secretary Gillian Keegan loses her seat to the Liberal Democrats, and Thérèse Coffey loses to Labour by 1,070 votes.

She was beaten by the Labour candidate Jenny Riddell-Carpenter with 15,672 votes, a managing director at a communications agency, specialising in crisis management.

This constituency was recognised as a battleground seat for the Conservatives, receiving a visit by Rishi Sunak in the middle of the election campaign.

Richard Tice, the Reform chairman, has won the party’s fourth seat of the night, describing his election to parliament as “the proudest day of my life”.

Tice won Boston & Skegness with 15,520 votes and a majority of 2,010 votes. The Boston district had the highest Brexit vote anywhere in the country and in the 2019 general election it was the second safest of all the Conservative seats.

In his victory speech, Tice said that he had been “sneered at and mocked”.

He said: “Millions and millions of people have today voted for Reform UK. We are coming second all over the country. It is truly remarkable.”

Tice was previously a member and donor to the Conservative Party but he defected to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in 2019 before later joining Reform.

A bit more on the independent candidate who unseated Jonathan Ashworth.

Shockat Adam, a former health worker, ran a strongly pro-Palestinian campaign, pledging to vote for a ceasefire and support the right to a peaceful protest.

He previously told the Middle East Eye: “The Palestinian cause is very close to the community’s heart, yet when they needed a loud and clear and distinct voice it was lacking.

“How can we stand by when we are seeing massacre upon massacre upon massacre?”

Suella Braverman won against Labour’s candidate

ANDREW MATTHEWS/PA

Suella Braverman apologised for the Conservative Party having let down its voters as she celebrated her re-election in Fareham & Waterlooville.

She said: “I want to briefly address the results in the rest of the country and there is only one thing that I can say: Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that my party didn’t listen to you.

“The Conservative Party has let you down. You, the great British people voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises, we’ve acted as if we’re entitled to your vote.”

The former home secretary received 17,561 votes, ahead of Labour’s Gemma Furnivall with 11,383, retaining the seat for the Conservatives.

Penny Mordaunt has lost her seat to Labour

BEN STEVENS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Another Tory leadership candidate bites the dust as Penny Mordaunt loses to Labour in Portsmouth North.

The former leader of the Commons lost by fewer than 1,000 votes.

Mordaunt, an MP since 2010, came third in the leadership contest to succeed Boris Johnson and had become popular among party supporters for her role in the King’s coronation and her speeches attacking opposition parties in the House of Commons.

Carla Denyer beat the shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire

SIMON CHAPMAN/LNP

The Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer has won Bristol Central with 24,539 votes, leaving the shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire without a job.

Debbonaire lost in a constituency which has the second highest proportion of private rented housing in England and Wales (47 per cent) and the fifth-most students in the country (30 per cent).

Starmer came to campaign for Debbonaire in the middle of the campaign but clearly his efforts were not enough.

The Conservatives have seen their only gain of the night in Leicester East after two independent former Labour MPs split the vote on the left.

Leicester East is the seat in the UK with the smallest proportion of white residents, with 20 per cent, and the highest from a south Asian background, with 65 per cent. Religion is divided between Muslim and Hindu, with the latter more numerous. It is by far the strongest constituency for Hinduism, at 38 per cent.

Keith Vaz and Claudia Webbe, both former Labour MPs who campaigned on identity politics platforms, received a few thousand votes and denied Rajesh Agrawal the win.

James Bagge at the general election count in South West Norfolk

SWNS

James Bagge, leader of the so-called “Turnip Taliban”, has arrived at the count at Liz Truss’s constituency of South West Norfolk.

An Eton-educated retired army officer and former high sheriff of Norfolk, Bagge is standing as an independent in what would normally be considered an impregnable Conservative seat. He believes it’s too close to call and the polls agree.

He is part of the faction of disaffected Conservatives known as the “Turnip Taliban” who, in 2009, tried to block Truss from being nominated for South West Norfolk in the first place. Anger at having an outsider parachuted into the constituency boiled over when Bagge and others learnt that Truss had had an extramarital affair. A result is expected at around 5.30am.

A bit more from Jeremy Corbyn, who we saw earlier winning a thumping majority in Islington North.

The former Labour leader said his majority of 7,247 was an indication that people “want something different, they want something better” in a thinly-veiled swipe at Sir Keir Starmer.

He said: “In the new government that’s coming in, they’re looking for an end to things like the two child benefit policy cap, they’re looking for regulation on the private rental sector, and if I may say so, they are also looking for a government that on the world stage is looking for peace, not war, and will not allow the terrible conditions to go on that are happening in Gaza at this present time.”

Stephen Flynn at P&J Live arena in Aberdeen during the vote count

MICHAL WACHUCIK/PA

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has told his party it needs to “inspire” voters again after retaining his seat of Aberdeen South.

He said the nationalists have to be “bold in our action” as it suffered multiple defeats to Labour in Scotland.

“We are experiencing something that we have not experienced for quite some time,” he said in his acceptance speech. “We are going to be beat in Scotland we are going to be beat well. So now is the time that we must learn and we must listen.”

Flynn, 35, has been tipped as a future party leader after a meteoric rise at Westminster.

Grant Shapps blamed the party’s infighting for the heavy losses

NIGEL HOWARD

A bit more from Grant Shapps, who became the first Tory leadership contender to lose his seat tonight.

Echoing the anger of some of his colleagues earlier in the evening, the former defence secretary said: “Voters have been dismayed by our inability to iron out our differences in private and do that and then be united in public. Instead we’ve tried the patience of traditional Conservative voters with a propensity to create an endless political soap opera out of internal rivalries and divisions which have become increasingly indulgent and entrenched.

“Voters have simply said ‘if you can’t agree with each other, then we can’t agree to vote for you’. We forgot a fundamental rule of politics — that people do not vote for divided parties.”

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, has lost his seat to a pro-Gaza independent in a shock result.

Ashworth, who had been considered for a more senior ministerial post in the Labour government, has lost his Leicester South seat to Shockat Adam.

The constituency is 35 per cent Muslim, and both of Leicester’s universities are based there, so students make up 24 per cent of the population, the 13-highest proportion nationally.

Adam won 35 per cent of the vote to Ashworth’s 33 per cent. The Conservatives came third with 11 per cent.

A shock gain for the Conservatives is Leicester East, with Shivani Raja defeating the projected winner Rajesh Agrawal.

Raja won the seat with 14,526 votes, a share of 31.1 per cent. Labour were 4,526 seats behind with 21.6 per cent of the vote share. This was the first time that Labour have held this seat since 1983, but the result was strong — seeing a 16 per cent swing to the Conservatives.

Labour has also won Paisley South, the seat formerly held by the firebrand nationalist Mhairi Black.

Johanna Baxter, a full time official with the Unison trade union, won the seat with a near 20-point swing as Reform increased its vote enough to push the Conservatives into fourth place.

Black announced before the election that she would quit parliament, citing a “toxic” environment at Westminster. She was replaced as a candidate by Jacqueline Cameron, the deputy leader of Renfrewshire council. Franz Ferdinand named a hit single after her as a result of her university relationship with the band’s drummer.

Nigel Farage arrives for the vote count at Clacton Leisure Centre in Clacton, Essex

JOE GIDDENS/PA

Nigel Farage vowed to build a “mass national movement” as he finally won a general election campaign.

The Reform UK leader, who has stood for election to the House of Commons seven times previously, was elected in Clacton with a majority of 8,405.

Speaking after the announcement, Farage said his party would be “coming for Labour next”.

A rare upset tonight for Labour in Islington North, where the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn has won a resounding majority of 7,247, with a total of more than 24,000 votes.

The veteran left-winger had been a Labour MP in the constituency for over 40 years until he was suspended from the party last year.

Douglas Alexander, the former cabinet minister, has won Lothian East with a majority of more than 13,000 over the SNP.

The seat was held by Alex Salmond’s Alba Party after Kenny MacAskill, the former Scottish justice secretary, defected from the SNP.

It was number one on Scottish Labour’s target list. Alexander, who has been tipped to go back into cabinet, could potentially return as foreign secretary after he lost Paisley & Renfrewshire South, where he had represented from 1997 to 2015, to Mhairi Black in the SNP’s 2015 landslide.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith has unexpectedly won the seat of Chingford & Woodford Green after the vote was split between Labour and an independent candidate.

The former Conservative leader won more than 17,000 votes in the seat he has held since 1992.

More than 24,000 votes were split between Shama Tattler, the Labour candidate, and independent Faiza Shaheen, the former Labour candidate who was deselected at the beginning of the campaign.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has lost his seat in Hertfordshire.

Labour won the seat of Welwyn Hatfield with a majority of more than 3,000.

It makes Shapps the first potential Tory leadership contender to lose his seat

Starmer said it was now time for Labour to deliver

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL

Sir Keir Starmer has been re-elected in Holborn & St Pancras with a majority of 11,572, a significant drop compared with the last election.

He said: “Tonight people here and around the country have spoken and they’re ready for change to end the politics of performance, a return to politics as public service. The change begins right here because this is your democracy, your community, your future. You have voted, it is now time for us to deliver.”

Starmer’s vote dropped by 17 percentage points while Andrew Feinstein, an independent candidate and pro-Gaza activist, came second with an increase of 19 percentage points.

Labour has won a seat in Whitehaven & Workington with a majority of 22,173, with the Conservatives trailing in third behind Reform UK who placed second.

Labour’s Antonia Bance has taken Tipton & Wednesbury from the Conservatives with 11,755 votes ahead of Shaun Stephen with 8,370 votes.

Bance is head of campaigns and communications at the Trade Union Congress, a national trade union centre, and previously worked in the charity sector.

Shortly after she announced her selection earlier this year, her partner of 12 years claimed on Twitter/X that “unreasonable and selfish” Bance had not informed him she was standing for parliament. The post has since been deleted.

Labour’s Andrew Ranger has taken Wrexham from the Conservatives with 39 per cent of the vote.

The Tory candidate, Sarah Atherton, who finished second, was the first Conservative MP elected to this typically Labour stronghold, taking the seat in 2019. The seat saw a swing of 11.6 per cent from the Conservatives to Labour.

The atmosphere among Tories at Roller City in Welwyn Garden City is funereal as the declaration at Grant Shapps’s count nears (Ben Clatworthy writes).

“They’ve won it,” one Tory said, looking downbeat. As count venues go this has got to be up there as among the strangest.

The rows of trestle tables are arranged under a glitterball in the centre of the arena that is usually a venue for children’s birthday parties. While Ed Davey would have been in his element on skates, Shapps was not.

For him, it is looking like the brutal end to a career that saw him serve under four of the five Tory PMs. He has sat around the cabinet table in five different jobs in the past five years. Come the morning, however, he will sit at his kitchen table without one.

Labour has won the first election result declared in Scotland, gaining Kilmarnock & Loudoun from the SNP (Kieran Andrews writes).

Lillian Jones secured a 5,000 majority over the incumbent Alan Brown in a result that was not projected in any opinion polls.

The seat was number 28 on Labour’s target seats north of the border and suggests that the exit poll was correct to project that the party, which finished third in the seat in 2019, is on course to secure a large number of constituencies at the expense of the SNP.

Jones is an NHS worker and East Ayrshire councillor who represents Crosshouse and Kilmarnock West. Brown, the defeated SNP candidate, was elected in the SNP’s landslide of 2015. He was previously the party’s energy spokesman.

Labour has won the seat of Rochdale, defeating George Galloway. Paul Waugh, a former journalist, will become the new MP for the area.

Galloway had this year won a bitterly contested by-election for the Workers Party, running on a pro-Gaza platform and accusing Labour of enabling genocide.

The result prompted Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, to punch the air on the BBC election programme.

Labour gains are now coming in thick and fast.

Alun Cairns, the former Welsh secretary, has lost in Vale of Glamorgan to Kanishka Narayan, who will become Wales’s first ethnic minority MP. Pam Cox has gained Colchester for Labour, while Josh Newbury gained Cannock Chase, Jo Platt won in Leigh & Atherton, and Chris Webb has taken Blackpool South.

The swing away from the Conservatives in Cannock Chase is monumental. The vote share compared with 2019 is 39.1 percentage points lower.

Speaking after his victory in Ashfield, Lee Anderson said: “I said a few weeks back there was gonna be a reckoning on election night and Ashfield which is the capital of common sense.

“This wonderful place I call my home is gonna have a massive say in how this country is shaped in the future. I want my country back and Ashfield can play their part in that.”

Two more gains for Labour from the Conservatives — Telford and Swindon North.

In Telford, Shaun Davies is the new Labour MP, as the Tories were pushed into third place by Reform.

Davies was one of the most important councillors in Britain, having taken over as chairman of the Local Government Association in July last year.

Will Stone, the new Labour MP for Swindon North, beat Justin Tomlinson, the Tory MP since 2010 and former junior minister. Stone is a veteran of the 1st Battalion, The Rifles, and was formerly a full-time bouncer at a nightclub and coach of a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym. Both Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak visited the seat during the election campaign.

Rachel Reeves was announced as winner in Leeds West & Pudsey

SWNS

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has been returned in Leeds West & Pudsey with 18,976 votes.

She said: “I do not want to preempt the results that are still to come but if what we have seen so far holds out then it is clear that the British people have voted for change, that in the coming hours after 14 years people will wake up to the prospect of a new government, the first Labour victory in nearly two decades, a page turned, a new chapter started, a chance to look ahead to a brighter future that seemed so remote for so long.”

Reeves, who is likely to be the first female chancellor in Sir Keir Starmer’s government, reiterated the party’s pledges to tackle the cost of living crisis, grow the economy, and to rebuild the health service and schools.

Lee Anderson has won a big majority in Ashfield, where he will be the Reform MP.

There has been a 34 per cent swing from the Conservatives to Reform in the Nottinghamshire constituency.

The Liberal Democrats have gained the south Hampshire constituency of Eastleigh from the Conservative party.

Liz Jarvis, the party’s candidate, beat her Conservative rival Sam Joynson by more than 1,500 votes.

The Conservative Party was defending a majority of more than 15,000 votes and saw a drop in their vote of more than 20 per cent since 2019.

The Liberal Democrats have claimed victory in unseating Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, in Cheltenham.

It is the second cabinet minister who the party says it will unseat.

A Liberal Democrat source said: “This is a massive result for the Liberal Democrats and demonstrates the anger that so many Conservative voters have for this government. The people of Cheltenham have elected a local champion in Max Wilkinson who will stand up in parliament and work hard to protect local A&E services.”

The first significant deviation from the exit poll has come in Barnsley North, South Yorkshire, where Labour has comfortably held onto the seat despite a strong showing of Reform in second.

The exit poll had given Reform a 99 per cent chance of taking the seat from Dan Jarvis, the Labour MP since 2011 and shadow minister of state for security.

Robert Lomas, the Reform candidate, was kicked out of the party last week after saying asylum seekers had it “in their DNA to lie”, meaning that if he had won he would have served as an independent MP.

Jarvis won more than 18,000 votes, 8,000 more than Lomas.

A full recount is under way in Basildon, Essex, where Richard Holden, the Conservative Party chairman, is standing.

Gavin Callaghan, the leader of the local Labour group, tweeted: “Basildon & Billericay — FULL RECOUNT. 20 votes in it.”

A Conservative Party official told the BBC earlier that if the the vote difference was less than 2,000 they would be asking for a recount. Labour representatives also said it was “too close to call”. Basildon was supposed to be a safe seat for Holden with a notional majority of 20,000 votes.

Two more gains for Labour from the Conservatives have declared — in Stroud and Nuneaton.

Jodie Gosling, the new MP for Nuneaton with a majority of 3,500, won a 19 per cent swing from the Tories. Gosling, who was a council leader in North Warwickshire, was a teacher at a nursery in Coventry.

Simon Opher, in Stroud, has been a local GP for 30 years. Rishi Sunak came to the south Gloucestershire seat in the third week of the campaign.

The Conservatives have won their first seat of the night, Rayleigh & Wickford in Essex.

This is no surprise because it was one of the safest seats in the country in 2019.

This time the Tories lost votes to both Reform and Labour and won by a relatively narrow margin.

Labour have gained the archetypal marginal seat of Darlington from the Conservatives.

Lola McEvoy, the new Labour MP, won a majority of more than 2,000 with an 8.1 per cent swing from the Tories.

McEvoy is a former organiser in the GMB trade union and a communications manager for the Living Wage Foundation.

The seat near the Yorkshire border has had four Tory and six Labour MPs since 1945.

Sir Ed Davey arrives at King’s Centre in Chessington, southwest London, during the count for the Kingston & Surbiton constituency

YUI MOK/PA

A Liberal Democrat source said the party is confident that it will unseat Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, in Chichester.

The party is less confident in Godalming & Ash, however, where Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is fighting to keep his seat.

A Liberal Democrat source said: “School’s out for summer for Gillian Keegan. We are confident of clinching a win in Chichester, making her the first cabinet minister of the night to lose her seat.

“This seat has been Conservative for 100 years, winning here is an extraordinary achievement.”

Sir Ed Davey arrives for the count at the Kingston & Surbiton constituency in southwest London

YUI MOK/PA

The Liberal Democrats are confident they have won more seats than during Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997.

A source for the party said: “We now believe we have won 47 seats, beating our 1997 result. This is an astonishing night for the Liberal Democrats.”

The Liberal Democrats have gained their first seat of the night, taking Harrogate & Knaresborough from the Conservatives.

On a turnout of 67 per cent, the Liberal Democrats have won 46 per cent of the vote, up 10 per cent from 2019. The share of the Tory vote dropped to 30 per cent, while Reform won almost 11 per cent.

A compact constituency in North Yorkshire, it is composed of two of the most genteel and well-off towns in the whole county. The Liberal Democrats held the seat from 1997 to 2010.

The Conservative Party’s biggest mistake has been “airing a lot of our dirty linen in public”, according to Dehenna Davison.

The former Conservative MP, who did not stand for re-election, told the BBC: “We’re supposed to be a united force fighting against the other guys, fighting against opposition parties and putting forth a united Conservative front.

“I think we found so many factions within our own that the infighting has begun. We’ve been frankly airing a lot of our dirty linen in public in a way that I don’t think is dignified for any party and I think that’s what’s led to the scale of the defeat we’ve seen tonight.”

She added that once the “dust has settled” many people in the party will have to take “a long hard look in the mirror” and accept responsibility for the election outcome.

Use our searchable table to find out what the exit polls have predicted for your constituency.

Jeremy Corbyn arrived to observe the election count in Islington, north London

JON ROWLEY/EPA

JON ROWLEY/EPA

The shadow home secretary could lose her seat to Reform, the exit poll suggests.

In what would be one of the most surprising results of the night, there is a 17 per cent chance of Yvette Cooper losing her Pontefract, Castleford & Knottingley seat to John Thomas of Reform UK.

The seat is a West Yorkshire red wall constituency. Situated east of Wakefield, Pontefract was a borough in medieval times, but Castleford and Knottingley are ex-mining towns. They have one of the 20 most working-class occupational profiles, are almost in the least 20 for degree-holding, and over 96 per cent white.

It’s very early days, but turnout in the six seats declared so far has been extremely low (Tom Calver writes).

The current turnout figure of 54 per cent is the lowest in more than a century. In Houghton & Sunderland South, which Labour held, just 51 per cent of voters turned out, down from 57 per cent in 2019.

Rachel Reeves arrives at the general election count at Leeds

SWNS

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, is “under no illusion” about the challenge facing Labour if they “get the chance to inherit the government from the Conservatives tomorrow”.

She told Sky News: “Everybody recognises the huge scale of the challenge that will face any incoming government after the damage done by the Conservatives. Debt is almost 100 per cent of GDP. Taxes at a 70-year high. The first parliament on record where living standards are lower at the end than they were at the beginning.”

On how long Labour want to be in government, Reeves was clear: “We are looking for a decade of national renewal”.

Labour sources are predicting that Reform UK will perform worse than the exit poll predicts, reports Sky News.

Early results are showing Reform coming second in Labour seats declared across the historic red wall.

There could be a split in the parliamentary Labour Party, with MPs in seats where Reform UK came second likely to outwardly disagree with MPs elected in southern, metropolitan and Scottish seats where the Green Party, the SNP or the Liberal Democrats were runners-up.

The chance of Liz Truss winning her seat in South West Norfolk is 84 per cent, according to the exit poll.

Labour and Reform UK both have an 8 per cent chance of winning, the poll suggests.

Terry Jermy, Labour’s candidate, has been a local councillor since 2013, while Toby McKenzie for Reform UK is a qualified teacher who worked as a nursing assistant for the NHS.

Sir Robert Buckland has taken aim at Suella Braverman as he accused his Conservative colleagues of being “astonishingly ill-disciplined”.

Asked if he was referring to Braverman, who wrote in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday that her party had “failed”, he told the BBC: “I’m afraid that’s not an isolated example, I’m fed up of personal agendas and jockeying for personal position. The truth is now with the Conservatives facing electoral Armageddon it’ll be like a group of bald men arguing over a comb.”

The Liberal Democrats appear to be calling Tunbridge Wells, previously held by the Conservative Greg Clark, though a result is not expected until 4.30am.

The former spa town is a commuting base to London, voted 55 per cent to Remain in 2016, and the Liberal Democrats took control of the council in May. The area last went Liberal in 1906.

If the prediction is borne out, the new MP will be Mike Martin, an Oxford-educated former British Army officer who worked in Myanmar and Somaliland for a risk management company after leaving the army.

Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, says the Conservative Party must work to bring people together as he lost his seat in Swindon South.

Speaking after Labour won the seat from the Conservatives after 14 years, Buckland said the political system is at a “crossroads”.

“Do we value those who work to bring people together and to come into politics to do something rather than be someone?

“Or do we shrug our shoulders and accept politics as a mere circus where people compete for attention by saying things that they either know to be untrue, or which raise hopes and expectations in a way that further erodes trust?”

Reform UK is going to achieve more than six million votes and win “many seats” across the country, Nigel Farage has said.

The Reform UK leader released a video on social media from his count in Clacton after the two results in the northeast were released.

In the video, he said: “There are two results in from the northeast of England that put Reform on 30 per cent of the vote. That is way more than any possible prediction or projection.

“It means we are going to win seats many, many seats, I think, right now across the country. This is going to be 6 million votes plus. This, folks, is huge.”

More than six million votes would eclipse the number the Brexit Party won in 2019 and the four million votes Ukip won in 2015.

Reform have performed in a strong second place again with Washington & Gateshead South, where Sharon Hodgson has been re-elected as a Labour MP.

Meanwhile in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central and West, Chi Onwurah was re-elected with a majority of 11,000, with Reform in a distant second.

The two have safe seats in common but are very different politically — Hodgson resigned from the shadow cabinet over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in 2016, whereas Onwurah served as his shadow minister for industrial strategy.

Though it is very early days, it is clear that Reform UK is performing very well in Labour’s heartlands (Max Kendix writes).

In Houghton & Sunderland South, what was a 16 per cent Brexit Party vote in 2019 has become a 29 per cent Reform UK vote. In Blyth & Ashington, a 9 per cent Brexit Party vote in 2019 has become a 27 per cent Reform UK vote. And in Sunderland Central, a 12 per cent Brexit Party vote has become a 27 per cent Reform UK vote.

That does not mean, however, that those votes are coming directly from people who would have otherwise voted Labour. Many voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019 but switched to Reform, pushing the Tories down to a distant third place.

The rise of Reform UK shows “potential” for a centre-right coalition to be built, Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, has said.

Although very insistent that the Conservatives cannot accept someone as “clumsy and offensive” as Nigel Farage, Baker did not want to rule out the possibility of a Conservative-Reform coalition: “The challenge for the next leader will be how to deliver a centre-right party and policy platform which appeals to the obvious coalition voters who are there for the taking.”

He said that the party must maintain its classically liberal values: “If the Conservative Party doesn’t stand for freedom, then it stands for nothing.”

Rishi Sunak will announce his resignation as Conservative Party leader on Friday morning, the political commentator Tim Shipman has said.

He told Times Radio: “My understanding, though, is that Rishi Sunak, who should hold his seat, will announce that he’s resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party tomorrow morning [Friday], and that he will say that he’s going to stay on until such a time as a leader has been selected.”

Shipman added that the party will then have to decide whether to launch a leadership contest straight away or draw it out to announce a new leader at the party conference in October. Potential candidates could include Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and Penny Mordaunt — provided they hold their seats tonight.

Sir Ed Davey, and his wife, Emily Gasson, leave their local polling station

ALEX MCBRIDE/GETTY IMAGES

The Liberal Democrats have declared victory in the first 12 seats — more than it won in the entire 2019 election.

A source for the party called them “Davey’s dozen”, adding they were “the first 12 of many wins we’re expecting tonight. From the West Country to Greater Manchester, the map is being painted gold as Liberal Democrats sweep to victory in the Conservative Party’s former heartlands.”

The seats declared by the party as victories are Torbay, North Cornwall, Yeovil, Eastleigh, Wimbledon, Woking, Guildford, South Cambridgeshire, Cheadle, Hazel Grove, Wokingham and Lewes.

Jeremy Corbyn at his local polling station in Islington, north London, today

TWITTER/X

Jeremy Corbyn looks like he is on course for a narrow victory in Islington North (Patrick Maguire writes).

A Labour source at the count said there could be as few as 1,500 votes in it. The exit poll says the result is too close to call.

Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, has lost his seat to Labour’s candidate Heidi Alexander in Swindon South.

Alexander won more than 21,000 to Buckland’s 12,000, with Reform on just over 6,000. Alexander is returning as an MP after six years, having given up her Lewisham East seat to work for Sadiq Khan as deputy London mayor for transport between 2018 and 2022.

Elected MP in 2010, she held several front-bench posts under Ed Miliband and became shadow health secretary for Jeremy Corbyn, but was the first shadow minister to resign after the 2016 referendum. In leadership votes, she backed Andy Burnham in 2010 and 2015, and Owen Smith in 2016.

One minor casualty of the night could end up being the phrase “Portillo moment” (Tom Whipple writes).

Since 1906, just 32 cabinet ministers have suffered electoral defeat while holding office — of which Michael Portillo in 1997 is the most famous. With so many at risk, could these soon be called Truss moments? Or Hunt moments?

Among those 32 ministers, there is no chancellor of the exchequer. Most pollsters believe that will change tonight — with Jeremy Hunt fighting a rearguard action against the Liberal Democrats in Godalming & Ash.

He can perhaps take some comfort, though, that if he loses he won’t actually be the first chancellor to be deposed at the hands of popular outrage. Walter de Stapledon, England’s 14th-century finance minister, also lost the confidence of the electorate. Without a clear democratic lever for removing him, they burnt his house down, beheaded him with a bread knife and sent his head to Queen Isabella of France. So it could be worse.

Daniel Finkelstein, the Times columnist and Conservative peer, said a lot of Tories would be “quite relieved” to be the main party of opposition.

But he hinted that Nigel Farage may regret his unexpected victory, telling Times Radio: “Interesting that Reform is projected to have 13 seats by tonight, that’ll be a cause of great joy in Reform UK headquarters.

“But it’s 12 more MPs than Nigel Farage really wants. Because now he’ll have a battle for the steering wheel. And within a year to two years, these 13 MPs won’t look as unbridled a source of joy as it looks right now.”

Lord Mandelson, the New Labour architect, told Times Radio that the exit poll result was a “miracle”.

He told How to Win an Election: “I think it’s a miracle because it’s never happened before, because no party so far behind has ever overtaken such an electoral deficit and climbed so far up such a steep cliff-edge as Starmer’s Labour Party has just done.

“No party has, as we have done, gone backwards in 2019, backwards in 2015, having lost power in 2010, and then just in 2024 catapulted into this extraordinary landslide victory. I mean, let’s assume that the exit poll is out by a few, but even so, it’s an extraordinary result and needs to say, I am an extremely happy boy.”

Ahead of the election there was a flood of so-called MRP polls which attempt to predict the result in great detail (Joey D’Urso writes). All pointed to a Labour landslide.

The exit poll projects a landslide too, but Labour’s seat total of 410 is lower than any of the MRP polls predicted, and the Conservative seat total of 131 is higher.

Nevertheless the exit poll points to a brilliant night for Labour and a terrible one for the Conservatives.

For the third time this evening, Reform has pulled in a very strong second place in traditional Labour heartlands.

Lewis Atkinson, the Labour candidate, won with 16,852 votes, followed by Chris Eynon for Reform on 10,779 votes.

It represents a swing of almost 8 per cent from Labour to Reform, as the Conservatives crashed to third.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said no party has a “divine right to votes” as he suggested the Tory’s defeat was partly explained by the decision to ditch Boris Johnson.

When asked if it was the “original sin” to get rid of Johnson, he told the BBC: “People do vote for a leader. Voters expect the prime minister they have chosen to remain the prime minister and for it to be the voters who decide when that person is changed.

“I think the fundamental problem was that in this election we were treating our base for granted and that is always a problem. Our base was peeling off to Reform and we have no divine right to votes.”

Rees-Mogg added that he will have to “wait and see” if he will be re-elected for his seat in North East Somerset, where Labour have a 53 per cent chance of victory according to the exit poll.

After the early results of Blyth & Ashington and Houghton & Sunderland South which were held by Labour, the next hour could see the first Conservative losses of the night.

At 12.15am Swindon South, which had a Conservative majority of over 6,000 votes in 2019, will declare. The exit poll is pointing to a Labour gain.

The Tory chairman Richard Holden’s new seat of Basildon & Billericay is also expected to declare at about the same time. Despite a Conservative majority of 20,000 in 2019 this is deemed too close to call.

Broxbourne in Hertfordshire is also due at about 12.30am. It has been held continuously by the Conservatives since its creation in 1983, with a majority of 19,000 in 2019. The exit poll has this as a likely Labour gain.

Bridget Phillipson was re-elected for her seat in Houghton & Sunderland South

IAN FORSYTH/GETTY IMAGES

And now a little bit more from Bridget Phillipson, the first MP to be elected tonight.

Speaking after more than doubling her majority from 2019, the shadow education secretary said: “Tonight the British people have spoken. And if the exit poll this evening is again a guide to results across our country, as it so often is, then after 14 years the British people have chosen change.

“They have chosen Labour and they have chosen the leadership of Keir Starmer. Today, our country, with its proud history, has chosen a brighter future.

“The British people have decided that they believe, as Labour believes, that our best days lie ahead of us — hope and unity, not decline and division. Stability over chaos.”

In 2014, Alex Salmond dubbed Dundee the “Yes City” as it recorded the highest proportion of support for Scottish independence at the referendum (Kieran Andrews writes).

The SNP has dominated the area electorally since 2007 but Labour added it to a list of target seats towards the end of the campaign.

Senior figures across both parties believe it will be a very tight battle in the new constituency of Dundee Central, and a Labour win would send shock waves across Scottish politics.

“We could be in for a long night,” said one source amid early suggestions it may be close enough to lead to a recount.

Read the full story

One of the candidates set to win for Reform has been suspended from the party and would serve as an independent if elected (Max Kendix writes).

Robert Lomas said asylum seekers had it “in their DNA to lie” and that “black people of Britain” were “grifting the race card” and should “get up off your lazy arses” and stop acting “like savages”.

He was removed from the party on Saturday after Nigel Farage was confronted by the comments on BBC Question Time.

The exit poll suggests that there is a 99 per cent chance of Reform winning in Barnsley North. Dan Jarvis, the incumbent Labour MP, is the shadow minister of state for security.

William Hague has described the predicted results as “catastrophic” for the Conservative party.

The former party leader told Times Radio: “When you compare it to any previous election, even the one that I fought in 2001 when we got 166 seats, it’s a pretty catastrophic result.

“If that is the result… that would of course be a catastrophic result in historic terms for the Conservative Party.”

He added: “And one of the things on my mind has been, since the Conservatives have been likely to lose the election for some time… can they form a viable opposition?”

Ian Lavery has been elected as the Labour MP for Blyth & Ashington with more than 20,000 votes, followed by Mark Peart for Reform with more than 10,000 votes.

Maureen Levy, for the Conservatives, received 6,121 votes.

Lavery, who won 20,030 votes, secured a majority of almost 10,000 on a turnout of 53 per cent.

Reform UK appear to be hurting Labour as much as the Conservatives in terms of seats, according to the exit poll (Max Kendix writes).

If the exit poll is born out, Reform UK will win 13 seats, far higher than most polls expected.

The seats of Bassetlaw, Great Yarmouth, Clacton, Boston & Skegness, Barnsley South, Barnsley North, and Hartlepool could all fall to Reform.

The latter three constituencies are traditional Labour territory — and would unseat Stephanie Peacock, Dan Jarvis and prevent the election of Jonathan Brash as the Labour MP in Hartlepool.

Angela Rayner told the BBC the exit poll was encouraging

UNPIXS

Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, said the exit poll was “encouraging” but that she was “not counting my chickens until the results come in” (Charlotte Alt writes).

She told the BBC: “The nine years I’ve been an MP, I’ve not been able to effect change because we’ve been in opposition. The ability and the opportunity to serve the British people and bring about the change they are desperate for would be a privilege for me but I’m not counting my chickens until we’ve got those results coming in.”

According to data collected by the party itself, Labour is “on a knife edge” in a number of seats, Rayner added.

Reform UK have come second in the seat of Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.

Sam Woods-Brass received 11,669 votes compared with 18,837 for Phillipson in Houghton & Sunderland South.

The Conservatives fell to third with just over 5,000 votes.

Bridget Phillipson after winning the Houghton & Sunderland South constituency

OWEN HUMPHREYS/PA

Labour holds the seat of Sunderland South with 18,837 votes for Bridget Phillipson.

If the exit poll is accurate, then this will be Labour’s third-biggest election win ever (Tom Calver writes).

The 410 seats it is forecast to win is just shy of the 2001 and 1997 elections, when Tony Blair won 412 and 418 seats respectively.

Sir John Curtice has said Britain is about to see one of the most “interesting and unprecedented” elections in electoral history (Max Kendix writes).

The polling expert said the Tory performance has been severely hampered by Reform. He said: “Much of the damage to the Conservative Party tonight is being done by Reform, even if it is the Labour Party that proves to be the beneficiary.

“Although this looks like an election where Labour is going to get a landslide in terms of seats, it does not follow necessarily that Labour has got a landslide in terms of votes.”

There were cheers at the Big Fat Greek restaurant in Clacton-on-Sea where Reform UK is holding its election night party as the exit poll was revealed, predicting 13 seats (Constance Kampfner writes).

If that turns out to be the result, or even close to it, it would be by far the best night for any party led by Nigel Farage at a general election.

The Reform leader gave gathered supporters an impromptu address.

“It’s been amazing,” said Farage, speaking into a microphone in front of a large screen broadcasting the poll. “We’ll see what happens but if that’s the result that would be a massive first step for this — I’m going to call it a movement — a political party is only part of what we’re all about.

“This is a movement to represent ordinary folk, the silent majority. So look, that looks to me to be very good news. Thanks all for being here, let’s enjoy the evening.”

The exit poll would represent the SNP’s worst election result in 14 years with the nationalists losing to Labour in Scotland for the first time since 2010 (Kieran Andrews writes).

If the cash-strapped party crashes into fifth place behind Reform, from its current position of third, it will lose significant amounts of money and visibility at Westminster. Momentum will also swing behind Labour in its bid to win back control of the Scottish parliament in 2026.

Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, who some nationalists blame for planting the seeds that the party’s problems have grown from, admitted the projection showed there were “clearly big issues” for the SNP.

Ballot papers in Glasgow

JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservatives, and Steve Baker, former minister of State for Northern Ireland, are both calculated to have less than 1 per cent chance of winning their seats (Charlotte Alt writes).

According to the BBC’s calculations based on the exit poll, Grant Shapps, former defence secretary, is estimated to have just a 6 per cent chance of winning his seat. Jeremy Hunt’s chance is 19 per cent, Penny Mordaunt’s is 25 per cent and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s is 47 per cent.

The BBC also calculated that Labour is expected to have a 100 per cent chance of gaining 110 Conservative-held seats.

Exit polls take place at about 144 demographically representative polling stations across the country, involving tens of thousands of voters.

Each person is asked to fill in a replica ballot and place it in a replica ballot box. In theory, this confidentiality means they are likely to be as truthful as possible.

While exit polls are relatively accurate, some have been better than others in recent years. In 2015, the exit poll did not predict a Conservative majority, despite being more accurate than opinion polls at the time. In 2017, it accurately forecast the Conservatives as the largest party but not that it would be a hung parliament.

But in 2019, the exit poll predicted a Conservative majority of 86 seats, almost bang on the final margin of victory.

The exit poll, conducted on behalf of Sky News, BBC and ITV, also suggests a strong performance by smaller parties.

The Liberal Democrats are predicted to win 61, up from the 11 seats they won in 2019. Reform UK is expected to win 13 seats while the Green Party is on 2.

In Scotland the SNP is expected to be reduced to 10 seats from 43 at the last election.

At the last election in 2019, Boris Johnson won 43 per cent of the vote and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn won 32.1 per cent.

The exit poll is projected on to BBC Broadcasting House in London

OLI SCARFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

With a majority of 170, Starmer looks on track for a similar majority to the one that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997, when he had a majority of 179. It is also a larger landslide than the 145-seat majority for Clement Atlee’s Labour in 1945, and the 144 seats that secured a second term in office for Margaret Thatcher in 1983.

If correct, the exit poll predicts the Tories won’t sink below their worst-ever performance in a general election. Instead, they are forecast to match the 131 seats they were left with in 1832.

For weeks a succession of polls have spelled doom for the Tories. Tonight, those polls appear set to become reality (Steven Swinford writes). On any metric, the Tories are on for one of the bloodiest nights in their electoral history. Records are set to fall like dominos.

Over the next few hours a succession of Tory big beasts will be defenestrated. And after all of it Sir Keir Starmer will emerge with an extraordinary mandate. What he does with it — and how far he is prepared to go to fulfil his pledge to change Britain — remains to be seen.

Sir Keir Starmer is on course to win the election with a predicted majority of 170, the exit poll has predicted.

The first result of the night is expected to be Blyth and Ashington, in Northumberland.

Although the name of Blyth is familiar from the shock first gain by the Conservatives in the 2019 election, more of this new seat originated in Wansbeck, which Labour narrowly held. Its largest town, Ashington, will be the most populous in the new seat, while 55 per cent of Blyth Valley has actually gone into Cramlington and Killingworth.

Blyth is a North Sea port, while Ashington is an ex-coalfield community known for sporting heroes such as the footballing Charlton brothers and more recently the cricketer Mark Wood.

The incumbent MP, set to be comfortably re-elected, is Ian Lavery, MP for the now-abolished Wansbeck since 2010.

Lavery was the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, succeeding Arthur Scargill in 2002, and was the Labour Party chairman under Jeremy Corbyn between 2017 and 2020. He left school to become a gravedigger and was an NHS mental health nursing assistant for 28 years.

• When are the exit polls announced? Hour-by-hour results timings

Rishi Sunak has given his No 10 chief of staff, Liam Booth-Smith, a peerage and a knighthood to the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden (Aubrey Allegretti writes).

The prime minister handed honours to his top team in Downing Street, as well as other Tory grandees and cabinet ministers in the list, announced less than an hour before polls close in the general election.

Peerages were awarded to Theresa May, the former prime minister, and Sir Graham Brady, the long-serving chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers.

Other Tories given peerages were Chris Grayling, the former cabinet minister; Alok Sharma, president of the Cop26 summit held in Glasgow; and Craig Mackinlay, a former Tory MP who lost all his limbs to sepsis.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also put eight former Labour MPs into the Lords, including Harriet Harman.

The “dissolution honours” list is published when parliament is dissolved before a general election.

Will there be a Tory wipeout? The much-discussed Labour “supermajority”? Even, perhaps, a Conservative win?

Here are six scenarious for what could unfold over the next 24 hours — and what it would mean for the next parliament.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, could lose his seat

TAYFUN SALCI/ZUMA PRESS WIRE/ALAMY

Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt … even Rishi Sunak could be at risk. Will he become the first incumbent prime minister in history to lose their seat at an election?

Laurence Sleator runs the rule over the senior Tories in most danger.

After six weeks of claims, counterclaims, stunts and controversy the politicians have run out of time to make their case to the people.

But when will we know the general election result, what are the key seats to look out for and which big names will have 2024’s Portillo moments?

Read Oliver Wright’s hour-by-hour guide.