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One week to go

Sound a klaxon! Bang a drum! Shake a rattle, for it is 2024 and somebody has actually started a blog. The good people of blogger.com will be beside themselves with excitement that this has happened, as I can only assume that nobody has done such a thing since before most of them joined the workforce.

I have bad news, though, for their annual bonus. This blog is going to be for one night only: election night 2024. As has been my custom for every general election from 2010 onwards, I will be staying up through the night and will be live-blogging the whole affair, watching a range of TV coverage and pontificating about everything from the BBC's choice of graphics to the fact that any constituency I haven't heard of must be made up on the night.

It may not become a source of deep political insight, but for the night of 4-5 July 2024, this blog will make fun of politicians standing in empty sports halls, journalists desperately trying to stir up interest in drone footage of cars, and campaigners repeating slogans while their careers die behind their eyes.

So, please come back here then, and join the fun.

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Hour 6 (2am-3am)

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Hour 4 (12am-1am)

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Hour 8 (4am-5am)

4.02am Suella has retained her seat. More bad news. But Bristol North West has been retained by Darren Jones - the Labour candidate, who had my vote - with ITV greeting this as 'Laura Saunders unsuccessful'. Since she was suspended after gambling on the date of the election, this wasn't a surprise. Over to Basildon & Billericay, where the Conservative chairman won his seat by a mere 20 votes, with his victory being met by almost total silence: he is not popular locally. Over in Boston & Skegness, David Dickason has 'deport all illegal immigrants' in the name of his party. Despite such an offer, Richard Tice has won the seat for Reform, standing in front of a sign saying "Boston ...a great past, an exciting future." Fact checkers are flocking. Also flocking is Rishi Sunak himself, heading to a provincial sports hall just like he's one of us. "We don't want to cut away" says Laura K, since we don't want to miss the money shot of...