9:49pm: Not one to break with a tradition that began in 2015 (back when I still believed a career in journalism was a thing people from working class backgrounds could aspire to), the blog has been temporarily resurrected for one night only. Forget the Olympics, forget the Euros, it’s neurodivergent Christmas. Make sure you’ve hung a stocking up for John Curtice cos it’s POLLING DAY!
Apologies in advance for the inevitably dodgy formatting: I’m currently writing this in the back of a taxi and will shortly be in the pub so things will only get worse. Or will they get better….? (D Ream pun very much intended.) Fasten yer seatbelts for the exit poll!
10:03pm: Would it even be election night if there wasn’t a big intake of breath? I hope those 13 reform seats aren’t accurate…
10:25pm: "An electoral meteor has hit planet earth"- Peter Mandleson would have made an excellent Doctor Who villain.
10:28pm: Apocryphal tales from doorknocking in 2017 at the pub: "I was a life-long Labour voter until that Harold Wilson devalued the pound".
Also much discussion of Barry Gardiner- anyone else remember the leaf-let from his bid to be Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee?
I had an excellent leaflet through from Darryl Morton-Wright, standing to be the Christian People's Alliance candidate in Shipley promising to make the abduction of dogs a criminal offence and slash funding for Quangos by £100 billion. If anyone has received a weirder bit of election literature, please send it my way and I'll buy you a pint. Incidentally if you want to email Darryl, you can find him at 'Dezzy'sBargains'.
10:50pm: Dan’s just nipped into the basement to bleach the drains and called last orders. Insert your own 'taxi for *Cabinet minister with a precarious majority* joke' here.
11:04pm: Wes Streeting doing his best to extol the virtues of Kier's leadership and say "we couldn't have done this in 2019". Corbyn aside, I think today's results have more to do with the miserable state of the country after 14 grim years of austerity and the hammer blows of Covid, the disastrous mini-budget and the resulting cost of living crisis. I think even if Mr Blobby were leader of the party we'd have won a landslide.
11:11pm (angel number xox): And now for the fashion of the General Election... over on the BBC's coverage, Andrea Leadsom's necklace looks like it could be full of Kyrptonite or something the Doctor has brought back from Meteblis Three: is this the start of hypnotising the 1922 committee in a leadership bid?
11:17pm: Sunderland are always speedy! Bridget Phillipson is the first MP of the New Parliament with 47.1% of the vote and an immaculately shiny bob to boot. 29.1% of the vote to Reform is worrying though, I hope it's not indicative of the rest of the night.
11:18pm: Up pops the honourable member for the 18th century. Are those photos of his 6 children behind him on the video-link...? No, it's Thatcher and Churchill.
11:28pm: Breaking news from the BBC: the returning officer in Heslemere is apparently handing out Biltong to keep the energy levels up.
11:30pm: Keeping an eye on my old constituency of Sheffield Hallam, which was famously Nick Clegg's old seat before one of 2017's biggest Portillo moments when Jared O'Mara won a surprise victory for Labour. So surprising, in fact, that he had to send an aide out to buy an emergency suit at the count. The court record later detailed levels of excess that would have put even David Bowie to shame back in the 70's: 60 fags, a litre of vodka and 5 grams of coke a day. Political memories are short though and the lib-dems are forecast to win it again, despite it having a large proportion of students. Maybe they've gone home and not bothered to turn out or maybe Ed Davey's six week scout jamboree has worked wonders and the tuition fees debacle isn't what most people automatically associate the Lib-Dems with.
11:45pm: Dan fuming that only 5 mozzarella sticks turned up in his takeaway. "They were FIVE POUNDS?!" This is the front-line of the Cozzie Live crisis. If only we didn't import so much of our cheese. This is a disgrace.
11:55pm: One of the tweets of the night so far from the always excellent Marie Le Conte:
2:11am: Just wondered out loud what had happened to the Natural Law Party.
Dan's answer? "Not a lot since George Harrison died."
More importantly, top secret information from Jenny, our inside correspondent poll clerking for Batley (Juliet's Mum) is that 33 people turned up to vote wearing Crocs.
2:18am: Aside from the 27,062 votes for Reform making 30p Lee the first Reform MP, can we talk about the fact that the Ashfield district council's logo has trees that look like butt plugs?
2:22am: Enjoying the Blair Witch Project sequel with the cameraman shoving his lens through a restaurant window in Clacton trying to get a blurry shot of Farage for BBC news.
2:24am: More important political analysis from Cam- "swingometer go wheeeeee".
2:35am: "Galloway is repulsive. I always wanted to chuck him out but never found a reason to." - Neil Kinnock, absolutely delighted that George Galloway has lost Rochdale just 5 months on from the by-election in February.
Also, any excuse to share this.
3:03am: "Right here beats the heart of our democracy", says Kier Starmer, thanking the other candidates in Holborn and St Pancras... sharing a stage with Sesame Street's Elmo. "An end to the politics of performance and a return to the politics of public service" is perhaps not going to be his "hand of history" soundbite summing up the night but maybe one English teachers up and down the country will wheel out to demonstrate the alliterative power of the letter P.
3:09am: Grant Shapps is the 6th Cabinet Minister to loose his seat. Glory days! Spend your £90.50 JSA wisely Grant... We could have had Iain Duncan-Smith's as a scalp as well if it weren't for the absolutely bizarre decision to de-select Faiza Shaheen and split the Labour vote in Chingford and Wood Green.
3:45am: The results are coming in thick and fast now! A round of shots to celebrate Jeremy Corbyn winning in Islington North: electorally not the best leader we've ever had (there's a post from several years ago of me calling for him to step down as leader in 2015 if you scroll down) but you can't knock him as a human being. I've always said that the Labour Party would be unstoppable if it had a leader with the policies of Corbyn but the political instincts of Tony Blair and I think booting him out of the party along with Faiza Shaheen was worryingly indicative of an un-needed purge of the left. Sadly Clacton was announced shortly after and Reform currently have 4 MP's. If you're reading this Josh, I owe you a pint!
3:53am: Michael Fabricant is another big scalp (pun very very much intended) of the night, losing Lichfield after 22 years which means I get to wheel out the story of the time the Colombian Border Force stopped him for suspected drugs smuggling... The white powder turned out to be Coffee Mate.
4:04am: Richard Holden has held on by a whisker of just 20 votes. Richard Tice has won Boston and Skegness but it's swings and roundabouts cos the Greens have won Suffolk Coastal and booted out Thérèse Coffey and are on 3 seats, the most they've ever had!
Incidentally, imagine standing against Richard Tice under the banner of "The English Democrats: Deport all illegal immigrants" like David Dickason. Unsurprising really though from a retired copper. xox
4:11am: Penny Mourdant also getting her P45: if she's skint I'm sure the infamous coronation Poundland dress will do well on Vinted.
4:17am: Sky apparently misjudged Suffolk Coastal and it went to Labour but 2 Green MPs is still double what they had yesterday and Brighton is still to declare!
4:24am: Obsessed with Bill Blockhead, the novelty candidate for Bath who looks like what would happen if Jamiroquai, Orville Peck and a packet of ramen noodles had an orgy?!
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