Reflections on the key election results as they came in through the night

Zero Five is monitoring press and web coverage of the UK election

Friday May 6

05.16 - Tony Blair arrives at Luton Airport and is whisked away in a motorcade of about twenty cars presumably at huge public expense to the National Portrait Gallery in London for what is officially described as “not a party”.

So, that’s ok then... if there’s no party we can probably all go to bed?

05.01 - Ed Matts, the Tory Photoshop expert, loses in Dorset South, Labour’s most marginal seat. Jim Knight increases his majority with a 1.7 per cent swing. The Lib Dems - on track for their best performance since 1923 - gain Cambridge with a signifciant swing from Labour’s Anne Campbell, incidentally the first MP to hold an online constituency surgery. The Tories took Northampton South from Labour.

As the prime minister presumably works on his impending cabinet reshuffle as he flies south, Friday morning’s papers are pretty scathing - “A kick in the ballots”, “Blandslide”, “Now make our lives better”.

04.42 - Boris Johnson holds Henley, one of the safest Tory seats in the country. Stanley, however, wasn’t able to become the first father to follow his son into parliament. The Tories have gained Milton Keynes and Gravesham from Labour, while the Lib Dems unseated Tory Tim Collins in Westmoreland. Somehow, the virtual Blair celebrating his victory on the BBC seems a little more animated than the real thing probably is right now.

04.33 - George Galloway defeats Oona King in Bethal Green and Bow by 823 votes. “Mr Blair - this is for Iraq. All the lies you have told have come back to haunt you and the best thing Labour can do is sack you tomorrow morning,” he said, launching an attack on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is “in the grip of a corrupt political culture.” The returning officer, he said, should resign for presiding over a “shambles of an election”.

04.28 - Labour secures an historic third term, despite garnering a record low 36 per cent of the popular vote. And Bob Marshall Edwards is elected in Medway after all, despite his earlier protestations.

04.18 - Michael Howard is easily re-elected in Folkestone, his vote going up by 9 per cent, and almost doubling his majority. All that despite the Peace and Progress candidate polling 22 votes and the presence of Rodney Hylton-Potts, the winner of ITV’s “Vote For Me” show. “It looks from the way the national results are going that Mr Blair is going to win a third term. The time has now come for him to deliver on the things that really matter for our country, for action and not talk from him,” he said. Today, he said, “marks a significant step on the road to recovery for the Conservative party”. As he was speaking, Labour moved within two seats of securing the 324 seats needed to form the next government.

04.08 - The Lib Dems take Solihull with what looks like the highest turnout of the night, 83 per cent. Sarah Teather, who won Brent East in a 2003 by-election to become, at 29, the youngest member of the House of Commons, held onto her seat despite a strong challenge from left-wing Labour candidate Yasmin Quareshi, who would have been Britain’s first female muslim MP. In Windsor, Adam Afriye is elected to become the first black Tory MP, with a substantial majority.

03.50 - Robert Kilroy-Silk got just 6 per cent of the vote in Erewash and came close to losing his deposit. RU Serious, of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, who appeared on the platform with a placard reading “Say No To Pointless Placards”, lost his, but didn’t really care. The Tories finally win a seat in Scotland, taking Dumfriesshire.

03.28 - The Tories have gained Hammersmith and Fulham from Labour, and have taken Welwyn Hatfield from health minister Melanie Johnson.

03.06 - The Tories take Guildford from the Lib Dems with a majority of 347 in a turnout of 66 per cent. The turnout has generally been significantly higher in marginal seats, while the Lib Dems gained Leeds North West from Labour. Labour, meanwhile, has held on in Battersea, with a majority of just 163.

02.52 - Just when you thought one was probably enough, there’s apparently another Kilroy-Silk standing in Leicester South. Shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin fights off a challenge from the Lib Dems in Dorset West. On the BBC he resists the temptation to rise to Jeremy Paxman’s assertion that the Tories are doomed to “wander in the wilderness of opposition”.

02.44 - “Were you up for Stephen Twigg?” Portillo’s conqueror and the first minister to lose his seat tonight has been unseated by the Conservatives in Enfield Southgate with a turnout of 66 per cent and a swing in the order of 9 per cent. In London so far, there’s a 5 per cent swing overall to the Tories. Meanwhile, Labour press officers seem to be conceding Oona King’s defeat to George Galloway in Bethnal Green.

02.25 - The Lib Dems have gained Birmingham Yardley and Cardiff Central, both from Labour and both with a swing of 9 per cent, and possibly Manchester Wythenshaw. Continuing the south London factor, the Conservatives gain Wimbledon from Labour.

02.24 - Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, man of the people, is re-elected in his Sedgefield constituency, with an increased majority on 2001. Reg Keys, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, got more than 4,000 votes. There were fifteen candidates in all. The representative of the Blair Must Go party got 143. “It’s clear that the British people wanted the return of a Labour government but with a reduced majority,” the prime minister said, “and we have to respond to that sensibly and wisely.” He said he knew that Iraq had been a “divisive issue” but hoped the country could now move forward. “Our job is to serve people”.

Reg Keys, meanwhile, in an emotional, moving speech, said he had to run for the memory of his son. “If this war had been justified by international law, I would have grieved and not campaigned. If weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, I would have grieved and not campaigned. ..I hope in my heart that one day the prime minister might say sorry.”

02.16 - Alastair Campbell, not this one, tells the BBC that the Conservatives are “flatlining”. Meanwhile Peter Law, the independent candidate who won Blaenau Gwent from Labour, said “This is what you get when you don’t listen to the people.” Also in Wales, the Lib Dems have gained Ceredigion from Plaid Cymru.

02.06 - Talk of a recount at Islington South.

01.56 - Labour has just held Hove by 400-odd votes from the Tories with a turnout of 64 per cent. And so much for the Lib Dems’ “decapitation” strategy - Theresa May holds Maidenhead with an amazing 72 per cent turnout. Must be the shoes.

01.48 - Kenny Baer, guest blogging on Talking Points Memo, says, fairly, “Brits are obsessed by swing”. But the problem with extrapolating is that swing is dependent on many local factors and probably doesn’t mean a great deal across the country. But one of the biggest swings of the night so far has been to the Lib Dems in Hornsey and Wood Green, where Barbara Roche has been ousted, overturning a 10,000 majority. The Workers Revolutionary Party candidate just got 34 votes in Birmingham Northfield. Probably a swing of his entire family.

01.34 - The Conservatives have gained Newbury from the Lib Dems. With just over a hundred results in, Sky News now forecasts a Labour majority of 80 seats.

01.31 - Alan Milburn says he doesn’t want to remain in the government, and that he has told Tony Blair that he won’t serve in the cabinet in a third Labour term. He tells Sky News that Blair “persuaded me with my arm up my back” to run the election campaign.

01.27 - The Conservatives have gained Peterborough, Brian Mawhinney’s old seat.

01.20 - The Torbay result leads to much talk of “tactical unwind”. There’s a recount in Manchester Wythenshaw. Further indications that George Galloway may be ahead in Bethnal Green and Bow. Labour’s Oona King, defending a majority of over 10,000, hasn’t yet shown up at the count. The SNP has gained the Western Isles from Labour’s Calum MacDonald.

01.07 - Alan Milburn re-elected In Darlington, while the Lib Dems hold onto Torbay. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw holds onto his seat with a reduced majority in Blackburn, the constituency with the third-highest number of muslim voters in the country. The Labour vote was squeezed in several directions, with a significant shift to the Lib Dems, and the British National Party polling over 2,000 votes. Turnout was 57 per cent. Robin Cook also holds his seat.

01.03 - Chancellor Gordon Brown wins the re-organised seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the first Labour candidate to increase his vote. Brown - not this one - says his mandate is a call to “renewed commitment”. Turnout was 58 per cent. The Lib Dems say they may have won Birmingham Yardley.

01.01 - There’s a recount in Battersea, the seat held for Labour with a majority of roughly 5,000 by former Guardian journalist Martin Linton (proudest achivement since being elected? “Running the marathon”); and next door to Putney, in the Wandsworth council area. Reports are that there are less than a hundred votes in it. Trend shows Labour well down - between 8 and 9 per cent - across London.

00.59 - The Scottish Nationalists hold Angus, while Labour keeps Midlothian. The Tories have yet to get on the board north of the border.

00.57 - John Prescott is re-elected in Hull East, despite a 6 per cent swing to the Lib Dems. “What’s most important is that it’s a third term for Labour,” he says. David Blunkett also gets back in for Sheffield.

00.52 - Labour has conceded the safest seat in Wales, Blaenau Gwent, the former constituency of Michael Foot and Nye Bevan, which looks like being won by an independent over the issue of Labour imposing an all-women selection shortlist. Meanwhile, maverick Labour MP Bob Marshall Andrews says he thinks he has lost Medway, and that Tony Blair is to blame. But he admits: “I’m sure that on a bad night for him (the prime minister) my going will cheer him up.”

00.33 - The Tories make their first gain, recapturing David Mellor’s old seat of Putney, with 35-year-old Justine Greening taking the seat with a 6 per cent swing from Labour. Tessa Jowell says Putney - the first real Labour-Tory head-to-head contest - showed the “differential effect” in marginals, that trends in those sorts of seats can’t be generalised out to the rest of the country.

00.29 - Labour’s Work and Pensions secretary Alan Johnson holds Hull West and Hessle despite a swing to the Lib Dems of 5 per cent. There’s also swings to the Lib Dems in the safe Labour seats of Rotherham, and Vauxhall in south London, with Dennis McShane and Kate Hoey respectively holding their seats. All three turnouts just under 50 per cent.

00.17 - Labour holds Barnsley Central, with a reduced majority. Swing shows Labour to Tories of about 4 per cent, while Lib Dems also have an increased share. Oona King reportedly “looking worried” in Bethnal Green, with George Galloway now apparently ahead.

The BBC is doing something very, very strange and potentially chaotic with spray paint in Gateshead...

00.14 - Former Labour foreign secretary Robin Cook tells the BBC that even in his own constituency he had people “coming up and saying that they couldn’t vote for me because of the war. I had to convince them that I was also against the war...”

00.08 - The Lib Dems are claiming to have defeated Barbara Roche in the north London seat of Hornsey and Wood Green, while some of the blogs have the Lib Dems also winning Cardiff Central. All of which reinforces Menzies Campbell’s assrtion that the party is “going like a bomb” in its target seats.

00.00 - Happy Birthday...,

Thursday May 5

23.56 - The first Scottish constituency declares, with Tommy McAvoy holding Rutherglen and Hamilton West, ahead of the Lib Dems and Scot Nats, a swing from Labour to the Lib Dems of about 5 per cent.

23.34 - BBC reports that Enfield Southgate, the seat that gave the world the iconic moment when Labour’s Stephen Twigg ousted former Tory minister Michael Portillo, is “too close to call”, while BBC London is apparently reporting a fight at the count in Romford. No... really?

23.31 - Fraser Kemp holds Houghton & Washington East for Labour. Another safe seat. Turnout 52 per cent. Again, Labour down about 9 per cent, Lib Dems up 6 per cent on 2001; a swing from Labour to Lib Dems of about 7 per cent.

23.26 - Sunderland North is held by Labour, with a swing to the Tories of about 5 per cent. Bill Etherington’s vote is reduced by about 8 per cent.

23.24 - The BBC reports that voters waiting to vote in Norfolk were being turned away when the polls closed at 10pm. If that’s true, this guy will doubtless have something to say about it.

23.08 - Andrew Marr tells the BBC “there’s a rumour that things are tight in Cleethorpes”... Nice one on the Deadbrain blog.

22.59 - Chris Mullin tells Sky - repeatedly - that the “important thing to remember is that there will be a Labour government in the morning”, dismissing the “small swings” away from him to both the Tories and Lib Dems, as well as the British National Party securing more than a thousand votes, roughly doubling its vote from 2001.

22.44 - Sunderland South, as expected, wins the race to be the first constituency to declare, returning Labour’s Chris Mullin with a slightly reduced majority. “We’ve demonstrated it’s possible to win elections by appealing to the best, rather than the basest instincts,” he says. Turnout was 49 per cent, fractionally higher than last time.

22.24 - Liam Fox, the deputy Tory leader, tells Sky News there won’t be a “uniform national swing” and that there will be “some surprises” in key marginals, but he says if Michael Howard is in Downing Street tomorrow, it would be “one of the greatest shocks in British politics”. He also plays down the role of immigration and says “the voters will decide” whether the strategy of calling Tony Blair a liar was the right one. But he also points out that in 1992, the exit polls inidcated a victory for Neil Kinnock.

22.12 - Lynton Crosby, the Tory campaign manager, predicts the party will gain between 40 and 50 seats. Even at the top end of that expectation, that statement effectively constitutes a concession. Labour’s Margaret Beckett tells the BBC she has a “horrible feeling” that immigration has helped the Conservative cause.