Boris Johnson’s gamble on a snap election looks to have handsomely paid off with Labour forecast to lose 52 seats.

A BBC/Sky/ITV exit poll put the Tories on 368 seats, with Labour losses predicted in their working class heartlands where the PM’s “get Brexit done” message hit home with Leave voters.

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to address his future when his constituency results are announced.

POLITICS Election
(PA Graphics)
  • Tories - 64
  • Labour - 62
  • SNP - 13
  • Lib Dems - 1
  • Others - 5

Other key events from the count:

– Tories win Blyth Valley from Labour for the first time in 69 years
– Bright spot for Labour as they take Putney
– SNP predicted to win 55 of the 59 Scottish seats

2.50am



2.45am

Former Brexit secretary David Davis was late for his own winning declaration in Haltemprice and Howden.

He arrived about a minute after the announcement was complete.

2.40am

POLITICS Election
(PA Graphics)

2.30am

Jeremy Corbyn has been seen talking to supporters on the count floor in Islington where he was joined by his wife, Laura Alvarez, and his communications chief, Seumas Milne.

He is not expected to give any statement on his future as Labour leader until his seat result is announced.

General Election 2019
Jeremy Corbyn at the count at Sobell Leisure Centre (Joe Giddens/PA)

2.20am

Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage said he believes Boris Johnson will extend the transition period for leaving the EU until 2022.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Farage said: “The truth of it is, half the Cabinet voted Remain. Michael Gove – I was with him earlier – clearly wants the softest of all Brexits.

“Boris, whilst he is committed to Leave, has never really, I don’t think, has been keen on leaving on WTO terms.

“My view is a big majority means that the influence of the ERG, the influence of those who are committed Eurosceptics, becomes a lot weaker and I would expect, I’ll predict, by July 1 we will be extending the transition period out until 2022.”

2.18am

POLITICS Election
General Election 2019 how the UK voted after 60 0f 650 seats. See story POLITICS Election. Infographic PA Graphics

2.14am

2.12am

Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery blamed the party’s Brexit stance for the poor show in the polls.

Mr Lavery, who held the Wansbeck seat but with 7,000 fewer votes, told BBC News: “My view is a simple view and that is that you cannot ignore democracy. You can try and push it away if you wish but the people in the North, the people who I associate myself with on a daily basis, are very much aggrieved.

“They are very angry at the fact that we’re still not out of the EU after three years and a half years. The thing is, they do blame the failure of the negotiators of the Tory Party, but they think and they have seen and they believe that the Labour Party is Remain Party.

“The fact of the matter is they are not going to tolerate that.”

He added: “I have been explaining to colleagues of mine for more than 18 months, possibly two years, that we shouldn’t have went down that path.

“But we are a democratic party and it’s not Jeremy Corbyn’s decision, this is a decision that was agreed by conference in 2019.”

2.10am

General Election 2019
A fox runs across the front of 10 Downing Street early on Friday morning (Yui Mok/PA)

2.08am

A video posted to Twitter by Financial Times journalist Sebastian Payne showed Conservative chairman James Cleverly addressing activists at the party’s headquarters.

“However this plays out, we are in the world of good news,” he said.

“I love this organisation, I love the party… This is the most successful political movement in the history of mankind,” Mr Cleverly said to whoops and cheers.

2.05am

Laura Parker, the national co-ordinator of Labour campaign group Momentum, said: “Obviously we need to wait for the full results but it looks like Brexit dominated.

“It’s unquestionable that Labour’s policies are popular. Every poll shows it, and there is absolutely no appetite to go back to the centrist policies of old. But in this election we were squeezed by Brexit and it was the defining issue.”

1.58am

General Election 2019
All hands to the count in Chipping Barnet, Finchley and Golders Green (Jacob King/PA)

1.53am

RESULT: Labour has won Putney from the Tories. The seat had been represented by Justine Greening who was Education Secretary under Theresa May, but had the Tory whip removed over her Brexit views and chose not to re-run.

1.50am

Former speaker John Bercow has reignited his rift with Andrea Leadsom, accusing her of suffering “from the rather material disadvantage of being wrong”.

Mr Bercow added that the former leader of the House “didn’t have a strong grasp of parliamentary procedure”.

He also said that he has never bullied anyone in his life, and revealed that he would accept a peerage if it was offered to him.

Speaking on Sky News, Mr Bercow addressed criticism that he did not remain impartial in his role when overseeing Brexit-related business.

Mr Bercow said: “My job was to stand up for Parliament. On the issue of Brexit, the truth of the matter is, if you look back, the consistent thread in my speakership was that I stood up for the rights of minorities to be heard.

“When Brexiteers were in the minority on the Conservative side, in fact, when the word Brexiteer hadn’t even been coined, they were known as Eurosceptics, I consistently gave them their head.”

“And as for Andrea Leadsom, well Andrea was perfectly entitled to her views, she didn’t have a very strong grasp of parliamentary procedure, and she was entitled to her opinion, but she suffered from the rather material disadvantage of being wrong.”

1.45am

1.40am

The new Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle has held his Chorley seat with 67.30% of the vote)

Traditionally the Speaker stands unopposed, and in the vote he faced only a Green candidate and an Independent, although that independent Mark Brexit-Smith got 23% of the vote in the Lancashire seat.

1.26am

Arron Banks, the co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, said it was “job done” after Tory Remainer MPs were “purged” from the party.

Speaking to the BBC, he said: “This has always been about pressure. What we’ve tried to do is return the Conservative party to its core roots which I think we have done.”

He said: “Let’s say 40 or so strong Remainers in parliament, 30 are gone.”

Mr Banks was sitting in the studio next to former Liberal Democrat MP Heidi Allen, who quit the Tories over Brexit, who chipped in and said the word “purged”.

Mr Banks agreed and said: “Purged, I would say,” adding: “We set out to make the Conservative party conservative again and I think it’s job done. Well done to Boris.”

1.23am

Outgoing Labour MP for Vauxhall Kate Hoey, who campaigned for Leave in the EU referendum, tweeted:

Meanwhile, another Labour MP who has stepped down – former deputy leader Tom Watson – was asked on Channel 4 if Jeremy Corbyn had to go and he replied: “No I don’t think he has to go. I think more importantly before you have any talk of a leadership election in the Labour Party, first of all let’s find out if these exit polls are correct.

“But if they do represent a big defeat for us, we have to have a proper analysis of why this has happened.

“We’ve stood on two manifestos that are broadly similar in the last two elections. Many of the policies within them the polls told us were popular with voters. We need to find out what went wrong.”

He added: “Boris Johnson is going to rule this country for five years. The Labour Party can find some space for itself to understand what it has to do to reconnect with the millions of voters it’s lost in the last decade, otherwise it won’t have a future.”

1.20am

Ken Livingstone, the former Labour MP and Mayor of London, predicts Jeremy Corbyn will resign.

He said his friend and ally had paid the price for several aspects of his campaign, including not taking more action against anti-Semitism.

“The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful,” Mr Livingstone told PA news agency.

“Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did. It looks like the end for Jeremy, which is disappointing for me since I’m a close ally. I’m sure he’ll have to resign tomorrow.”

1.14am

It is now 49 days until Britain is scheduled to leave the EU – made all the more likely by the predicted Tory gains tonight.

1.06am

1.04am

Political rivals Lord Buckethead and Count Binface have clashed in the Prime Minister’s constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

With Boris Johnson not expected to appear in Uxbridge for some time, it was left to the fringe candidates to take centre stage as the election count got under way,

Independent Count Binface told the PA news agency: “If I get a big fat zero that would be a record.”

Comedian Jon Harvey, who plays the Count, was seen mocking Lord Buckethead – making a thumbs down behind his back, shouting “Fake news” and singing the American national anthem.

Mr Harvey previously ran as Lord Buckethead in Theresa May’s constituency in 2017, but cited “an unpleasant battle on the planet Copyright” as the reason behind the switch to Count Binface.

12.58am

Democratic Unionist Party East Antrim candidate Sammy Wilson has denied his party has been left dismayed by exit poll indications that the Conservatives will be returned with a sizeable majority.

The Democratic Unionists became kingmakers in the last Parliament when Tory governments under Theresa May and Boris Johnson relied on their 10 votes through a confidence and supply deal.

General Election 2019
DUP candidate for East Antrim Sammy Wilson as the counting continues at the Titanic exhibition centre, Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA)

Mr Wilson told the PA news agency that he was not surprised at the exit poll results, claiming Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had had a “toxic effect”.

“Obviously we’d have preferred to be in a situation we were in the last Parliament where we did have the influence and where it was fairly marginal, however for the country it probably wasn’t a great thing because no decisions could be made,” he said.

“I still wouldn’t be totally dismayed insofar as a big majority could actually mean that Boris Johnson can go in and be fairly bullish with the EU when it comes to negotiations, and if he does do that then many of the problems the current deal is going to cause Northern Ireland could disappear.”

12.53am

General Election 2019
The scene at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh (Lesley Martin/PA)

12.48am

New European Council President Charles Michel said EU leaders would discuss the results of the election later on Friday.

He said: “We will see what will be the official results but there is a strong message.

“We will have the discussion tomorrow in the European Council, Article 50, you know that we are ready for the next steps.

“We will see if it’s possible for the British Parliament to accept the Withdrawal Agreement to take a decision, and if it is the case, we are ready for the next steps.”

Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, added: “Of course we have to wait for the final result, but then we will congratulate the winner of the election and show our respect to all those who have participated.

“I think we will immediately listen to the prime minister just to be reassured and we have reaffirmed what the pathway is.”

12.41am

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove is surprised his party gained Blyth Valley.

Mr Gove said he was “delighted” for Ian Levy, a mental health worker and the new Tory MP for Blyth Valley, but added: “But I’ll be honest, I didn’t necessarily expect that we would win that seat.”

Speaking on Sky News, Mr Gove added: “Well, I think it’s still too soon, we’ve only had a limited number of results, to be prepared to be confident that the exit poll is right in all its particulars, but I do think it points to the fact that Jeremy Corbyn appears to have been decisively rejected by Labour voters.”

Mr Gove added that Mr Corbyn’s “failure to honour his manifesto commitment in 2017 to get Brexit done”, has damaged Labour’s vote, and that “the more that voters saw of Corbyn and his approach both on national security and on economics, the more they felt he was not the right person to be prime minister”.

12.40am

12.37am

Police in Glasgow are investigating three cases of suspected voter fraud.

Glasgow City Council reported three cases of alleged “personation” following Thursday’s poll.

The offence occurs when a person votes as someone else.

It is understood one instance is being investigated in each of the Glasgow North, Central and South seats.

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said the authority is “co-operating with the police” on the matter.

BBC Scotland reported further possible cases of voter fraud in the Stirling and Paisley and Renfrewshire North constituencies.

12.32am

The Liberal Democrats are “quietly confident” Sarah Olney will retake Richmond Park from Conservative Zac Goldsmith.

A senior party source said: “There aren’t going to be multiple recounts and I doubt there will be any recounts at all.”

  • Conservatives – 354 seats
  • Labour – 206
  • LibDems – 15
  • SNP – 52
  • Green – 1
  • Plaid Cymru – 4
  • DUP – 10
  • Alliance – 1
  • Sinn Fein – 7