From the Guardian live, see the bottom line. "Nigel Farage’s Reform UK appeared to be on course for a dramatic breakthrough according to an exit poll which showed it was on course to win as many as 13 seats. While there was caution about how exit poll would ultimately translate into seats, it was clear that millions of people had voted for the hard-right anti-immigration party, which has stated that it is out to destroy the Conservative party. Ben Habib, Reform’s deputy leader, said: “This is a huge bridgehead. This is politically seismic.” The poll results suggest that Farage, who sparked a political earthquake on the right after he returned as leader of the party last month and announced he had changed his mind about running, was on course to win the Essex seat of Clacton. Richard Tice, Reform’s chair and the man who stepped aside so that Farage could come back, appeared to be in a strong position to win in Boston and Skegness. Others who were in a strong position included the former Southampton Football Club Chairman, Rupert Lowe, who was running in Great Yarmouth."
Reform got a lot of votes in Sunderland South. Need a stable government now so all this extremist nonsense dies away.
Reform go one of two ways, they either inhale the Tories and put their tanks on the Labour lawn, or they split the right vote for a long term period and grow slowly but gift Labour a few elections in the meantime. They are taking points from Labour but it is a lot less than they are doing to the Tories. Farage like all of us only has finite time though and they would struggle to replace him if he retires or becomes too frail.
Sunderland voted heavily for Leave, so perhaps not a great surprise. But yeah, it's on Starmer and Labour to make a real difference to people's lives. Extremism flourishes when people feel insecure and unheard.
“Sick of all this woke stuff”. Slogan of the night. Jesus. A world where we are horrified by letting people be who they want to be. **** me.
They are disconnected, they won't beat Reform on the right and they will hemorrhage more centrist voters in the process. Possibly the beginning of their death cycle. Their core vote is literally dying of old age and they aren't replacing them.
Major Curtice bomb there, he says Reform are actually not doing as well as the exit poll projected in those first two seats and the Conservatives are doing slightly better.
Will fit their narrative quite well if it turns out they get significantly fewer seats than 13. Almost a win-win for them really. Either a better than expected result or they can claim a stitch up with last minute vote dumps like Trump did. And some of their supporters will believe that
Early doors, but Lab and LD possibly doing better than exit poll, cautious because I don't want to curse it. Labour held Barnsley North which exit poll has as 99% probability of Reform gain and Barnsley South hold which was 98% probability of Reform gain. Lib Dems reckon they have taken Chichester, which was over 80% set to a Conservative hold.
He won by a distance there, but Reform have already missed 3 of the 13 seats they were projected for in the exit poll.
It's really odd. Kuenssberg cannot stop. Watching C4 for the most part, thankfully - but cycling through the channels
Well Galloway's gone. I think that will please most people. Having seen a few results I don't think that exit poll is at all accurate on individual seats. Results and swings seem to be varying a lot locally, although the Conservative collapse is fairly widespread. I'm not sure the Conservatives will get as many as 130-odd seats. Time for bed though.
