Gateshead Central - Another north east england seat. Labour Hold
Tories pushed into fourth behind Reform and Lib dems
Edit and another one. Cramlington and Killingworth. You know the drill by now. NE England. Labour Hold, Reform Seconrd, Tories collapse into third.
I wonder what it is about the NE that gets 8 of the first 9 results counted and confirmed being in that region.
Small urban seats where it’s easy to gather all the ballots. And that area has a tradition of trying to get the first result out, so they’re staffed up to do it efficiently.
You’ll find that the big, rural seats take longer to count.
Lib Dems GAIN Harrogate and Knaresborough from the tories
Tory vote down 22% . votes go evenly to Lib Dems and Reform.
I suspect the interesting post- mortem will be actual percentages. I suspect those will also be over analyzed.
Oh, sure - but there are some of those outside the NE, too, surely?
Hey-ho
The first LibDem gain from the Tories just announced in Harrogate. Yaaaay!
The Rory Stewart on C4 noting that with turnout so low (relatively) the polls - inc the exit poll - my prove not to be that accurate. Nadim Zahawi (Mr YouGov) agreeing, noting that turnout is the most difficult thing to predict - almost impossible.
The may have a point. Don’t trust the exit polls - yet.
Labour hold South Shields, Reform in second again, but Green is in third.
A big deal in what was traditionally a coal mining and ship building area.
Labour Gain Stroud.
They’re up 5 points there, but the tories collapse by 20%
Gillian Keegan loses Chichester to LibDems. That’s big. Chichester was way down the LibDem target list (20?)
Sunderland South is usually the first. And the boundaries change, so absurd local pride sloughs off to the neighboring districts,
Tories finally keep a seat.
Rayleigh and Wickford , where they had 72% of the vote last time.
They’re now on 37%, to Reform’s 25% and Labour’s 24%
That Tory headbanger Mark Francois. An execrable human being. His vote share was way down - Reform took a huge bite out of it. Mark Francois could easily have been a Reform candidate, he’s that much of a fuckwit. That’s probably the only reason Reform did not beat the Tories here.
That’s part of the problem for the post-election Tories. They’re only going to keep the safest seats, who don’t exactly have the most mainstream MPs.
Labour Gain Darlington.
Another North east England seat where the Tories have collapsed, Reform are up and Labour are level.
Yes - for all her faults, Gillian Keegan was at least something of a relative moderate/centrist and Remainer. If the Tories lose people like that, the merger with Reform gets closer and closer.
ETA seems I was wrong - Keegan has not yet lost. Predicted to lose.
She is a TER. If TERs are moderates then it’s time to burn the country to the ground.
Labour Gain - Nuneaton
Another Tory collapse, with their vote down, Labour up slightly and Reform Up.
And Darlington a Labour gain. Reform splits the right-wing vote letting Labour in.
More Labour Holds- Knowlsley and Barnsley North. Safe Labour Seats. Reform now second in both.
I think I’ve seen the trends now. Going to grab a few hours kip and back early tomorrow to see how the night has shaped up.
Have good night everyone.
(How could we all not have a good night, seeing the back of 14 years of lies, corruption, economic incompetence and vicious culture wars and ‘cruelty is the point’ policies that have almost broken Britain. I will remember this night for a long time, whatever the future holds. FUCK THE TORIES!!)
