Bluestocking Extra: Election Night!

Your hour-by-hour guide to notable moments and schadenfreude opportunities.

Happy . . . Monday?

Yes, it’s a special edition for election nerds, as I was about to do a long Twitter thread of the seats that I’m looking out for on Thursday night, before remembering that no one sees tweets any more.

You might spot that this doubles as a potential schadenfreude guide, as—if the polls are right—there will be more “Portillo moments” than you can shake a copy of the 1997 pledge card at.

Helen

PS. The full list of projected declaration times, as drawn up by the Press Association, is here. Sam Freedman’s seat previews have been useful (here) in drawing this up, as has the Guardian’s countdown.

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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

10.01pm

Exit Poll

Have a stiff drink ready, and then go to sleep for an hour or two . . . is advice that I always give myself, but never take.

Realistically, apart from the sound of hysterical crying/hysterical laughing, nothing much will happen after this for another three hours. The last few exit polls have been pretty accurate: in 2019, the poll predicted Cons on 368 and Labour on 191, against actual results of 365 and 203. The 2017 poll correctly (and unexpectedly) revealed that the Conservatives had lost their majority, but the 2015 one incorrectly predicted a hung parliament by under-estimating the Tory gains (although it got the SNP ones right).

12.15am

Basildon and Billericay

Wake up, babe! The first sign of a possible Tory apocalypse just dropped!

The Conservative party chairman Richard Holden, who is, devastatingly, younger than me, did a chicken run to this Essex seat from his old constituency in Durham. The local association was pissed off, and might not have been straining every sinew to campaign for him. Still, the old version of this seat had a Tory majority of more than 20,000, which would normally make it a safe seat.

If Holden loses here to Labour or Reform, expect major schadenfreude. Also, it would be a sign that the asteroid really is coming for the Conservatives.

2am

Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East

Rod Liddle is standing here for the SDP, and might lose his deposit.

Swansea West

Unless something wildly unexpected happens, the Resolution Foundation’s Torsten Bell will win this seat for Labour and immediately become one of the most interesting leftwing thinkers on the back benches. He was at university at the same time as me, which is obviously also devastating.

2.30am

Durham North

No one winds up Corbynites quite like Luke Akehurst, aggro-centrist, secretary of the Labour First group, and strong supporter of Israel. He posted a photograph of himself eating a big lunch early in the campaign, which Jez-lovers posted mean comments about, so ever since then he has just posted more pictures of himself eating big lunches, driving them ever crazier. So that’s where we’re at with Labour factionalism.

Rochdale

George Galloway is notoriously good at winning seats, and notoriously bad at keeping them. His Labour opponent here is former journalist Paul Waugh.

3am

Stockton West

If this Conservative seat goes red, the new MP will be Joe Dancey, aka Mr Wes Streeting. If they get married—they got engaged a while ago, but I guess have been quite busy since—they’ll be the first pair of married men to sit in the Commons at the same time. Which would be nepotistic but also quite sweet!

Jeremy Corbyn addresses the voters of Islington North

Islington North

Jez We . . . Can’t? The chat about Jeremy Corbyn’s huge personal vote has receded in the last fortnight, after Novara commissioned a poll of the seat that had Labour’s candidate Praful Nargund on 43 percent and Corbyn on 29 percent. (Lib Dems and Greens had 7 percent each, so there’s a little bit of squeeze.) Jezzites then started to brief that people who wanted to support Corbyn had been accidentally voting Labour instead, and it was party HQ’s fault for making it clear so late that he couldn’t stand as the Labour candidate. From which I surmise that they believe the Novara poll.

Chingford and Woodford Green

Iain Duncan Smith is defending this seat against both Labour’s Shama Tatler and the independent candidate Faiza Shaheen, who was barred from standing for Labour at the last minute over her social media likes.

Tatler is involved with Labour To Win, a conglomeration of Progress and Labour First, the powerbrokers on the right of the party. Sam Freedman’s seat breakdown has Tatler winning.

3.15am

Bristol Central

After flirting with running against Lloyd Russell-Moyle (suspended), Eddie Izzard (unselected) and then Keir Starmer, merchandising genius and self-styled only real TERF Kellie-Jay Keen decided to run in Bristol Central. Sadly for her, Keen got no publicity and might well lose her deposit. (The full list of Party of Women candidates is here.)

Instead, all of the attention in Bristol Central has been on the battle between Labour shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire and the Green candidate, Carla Denyer, who is expected to win—a rare setback for Labour on a night of expected triumphs. Owen Jones turned up here during the campaign to demand Debbonaire answer his questions on Gaza, which is apparently part of this constituency on its new boundaries.

3.30am

Portsmouth North

Asteroid watch. This is Penny Mordaunt’s seat, defending a 15,000 majority.

Godalming and Ash

Asteroid watch. Jeremy Hunt is being targeted hard by the Lib Dems in this new seat. Could be a big moment.

Louth and Horncastle

Asteroid watch. Currently held by Conservative cabinet minister Victoria Atkins but YouGov has Reform winning (one of five seats YouGov thinks Reform will pick up).

4am

Clacton

I presume Nigel Farage will win this one, and start carrying on like he’s Eva Peron and Alexander the Great rolled into one, terrifying whole.

More interestingly, Boston and Skegness also reports around this time, where Reform’s beta male, Richard Tice, might overturn a whopping 27,000 Conservative majority. Based on Farage’s previous form—20 out of the 24 Ukip MEPs elected in 2014 left the party before the next European election—the chances of both men still being Reform MPs at the end of the parliament would be low.

Richmond & Northallerton

Asteroid watch. This is Rishi Sunak’s seat, and ought to be a safe hold, but it’s a sign of the intensity of Tory nerves that they’ve been campaigning there. That probably springs from the presence of a big barracks, where people were apparently unimpressed with Sunak’s early exit from the D-Day commemorations.

Ahmed Yakoob (Instagram)

Birmingham Ladywood

Labour’s justice spokesperson, Shabana Mahmood, is standing here—and the party’s worries over the seat spring from the presence of an independent, Ahmed Yakoob, who has a very bling image and talks a lot about “genocide” in Gaza. The seat is 43 percent Muslim. Yakoob is a flashy, charismatic campaigner who won 20 percent of the vote in the Birmingham mayoral election, and his performance here will demonstrate how much Keir Starmer’s slowness to call for a ceasefire has hurt Labour with Muslim voters.

Suffolk West

The Telegraph’s 5th most alarmist columnist, Nick Timothy, could win here, in what is mostly Matt Hancock’s old seat. But he could also have a worse election night than 2017, when he got blamed for Theresa May’s lost majority. Hard to call.

Braintree

James Cleverly should hold this unless the evening is a total Tory wipeout, ensuring there is at least one sane person left to enter the subsequent Conservative leadership race and get rejected by the members in favor of the literal ghost of Attila the Hun.

4.30am

North East Somerset and Hanham

Asteroid watch. This is Jacob Rees-Mogg’s seat, and he had a chunky 16,000 majority on the old boundaries, but could well lose to Labour (the Lib Dems have not campaigned heavily here).

Ashfield

Totally insane seat. The incumbent Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories to Reform, is running against Labour, the Conservatives and an independent whose group controls the council. That independent, Jason Zadrozny, has some other things on his mind apart from the election, mind you: his upcoming trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion, which he denies, has been moved outside the county.

If Anderson loses to Zadrozny, it might be the only bit of schadenfreude Rishi Sunak gets to experience all night.

Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr

Craig Williams, suspended from the Conservative party over the betting scandal, had support withdrawn but is still on the ballot. Could be an awkward count.

Edinburgh South-West

Joanna Cherry has had a very rough time with the SNP leadership over gender. And her seat is under threat from Labour—Electoral Calculus has them winning (just), while the YouGov MRP has Cherry holding it.

Derby South

Chris Williamson, pushed out of Labour in the antisemitism row, is standing here for George Galloway’s Workers Party. He stood as an independent in 2019 and got 635 votes.

5am

Bicester and Woodstock

One-time George Osborne adviser Rupert Harrison is standing here. If Harrison wins, you would expect him to be a big player in the future of the Tory party, but the polls have it as knife-edge three-way marginal between him, Labour’s Veronica Oakeshott and the Lib Dems’ Calum Miller.

Update: A correspondent notes that Veronica is the sister of Isabel Oakeshott, while Calum Miller was Nick Clegg’s PPS during the coalition.

Photo by Stephanie Moody on Unsplash

5.30am

Norfolk South West

Liz Truss! A couple of the MRPs have her losing, because of a big Reform vote, along with an independent, could allow Labour to come through the middle. (Truss has a majority of 24,000.) If you’re still awake by now, award yourself a Bloody Mary with a big piece of lettuce in it.

Anything I’ve missed? Drop it in the comments.

PS. We’ve nearly sold out my live event with Jesse Singal on August 3. If you want to join more than 300 other internet beef aficionados, tickets are available here.