2.09am
A couple of things I should clear up. Firstly, the Titanic Exhibition Centre is not the same thing as the Titanic Museum, which is where I've been. The centre may or may not be a rip-off. As Simon has pointed out, there wasn't a large empty conference room at the museum, and why would there be? Also, Rachel Reeves has just won in Leeds, and Simon & I disagree in our affection for her bob. It is, I'll grant you, distinctive, but I'm not a bob fan. Anyway, "she looks radiant" according to Emily, as she cuts her off in the middle of a tribute to a (I think) recently departed colleague.
Now is as good a time as any to tell you that I went to school with the Conservative candidate for Bromsgrove, Bradley Thomas, and the BBC puts him down as having a 43% chance versus Labour's 57%. I'm rooting for you, Bradders, and I'll keep quiet that you were a passionate Labour member until one day turning up to school as a convert to Michael Howard [sic].
ITV have got a guy who looks a bit like Steve Pemberton. But will it be Keir Charmer who is Inside Number 10? Yes. And he doesn't look that much like Steve Pemberton, now that I see him again. Anyway, he's cut off for Swindon North, where the Green candidate looks about as Green candidate-y as you could possibly imagine. The Lib Dem is called Flo Clucas, which feels like a typo or possibly an anagram. Will Stone - one of the more emphatic ways to leave your possessions to the next generation - has won it for Labour.
2.17am
James Cracknell has lost Colchester for the Tories, following a row (ho ho) when stuck his oar in (ha ha) and described his own party as a shower of... well, the kind of stuff you generally find in rivers these days. "Any thoughts from anyone?" Tom Bradby asks. It's getting to that time of night. By the way, the Steve Pemberton guy is in fact Gavin Barwell, as I confirmed by googling 'Gavin politician'.
So far the Tories have got 2 seats and already lost 14. If this were a game of musical chairs, it's at the stage where the person playing the music has got a really unfair influence on events unless they're looking away, which they really should but so rarely did. The organisation of musical chairs in this country has always been nonsense. And, while we're at it, whenever we played Simon Says, I was so rarely given the role of 'Simon' because people always thought it was amazingly funny to give it to Simon. If Rishi thinks he had a deprived childhood, he ain't seen nothing. And I didn't have Sky.
2.26am
In Hartlepool, someone is holding up a sign in front of the camera saying 'Hartlepool'. Helpful, but it is blocking the entire screen. The returning officer is the most bored-sounding of any I've seen, and clearly too boring to be listened too: Sky News have cut across to Ashfield, where noted buffoon Lee Anderson has claimed the first Reform seat of the night - he calls it the "capital of common sense", but the result indicates otherwise. It's down as a Reform Gain, but since Anderson defected previously, wasn't it already a Reform seat? Anyway, results so far are a narrow 1-2-3-35 lead for Labour. On the bright side for the Tories, their overall vote share is now level with Reform at 21%, having previously been lower.
Kay has described the House of Commons as the mother of all parliaments, which is a common misconception, as the 'mother of parliaments' is in fact England.
Cannock Chase - where I'm going on holiday with Ant, Rich & Rob next month - is a Labour gain from Conservative, with perhaps the biggest swing away from the Tories ever, at 26%. Meanwhile, Keir Charmer has made it onto our screens for the first time tonight, smiling broadly. What happened to the drone/helicopter footage of leaders driving to the counts? That was always a highlight of the wee hours.
2.36am
Keir is now being selfied to within an inch of his life. Not far from him is a man with a hat that is either supposed to be a turkey or the Pink Panther. Meanwhile, another 12 seats have gone to Labour (albeit not on C4, who still have them on 35). Even given their huge victory, why is it that Labour seats return more quickly than others? Is it because they're more urban so polling stations are less spread out? Yes, probably. I'm solving conundrums left, right and centre here. One conundrum I haven't solved is why C4 but Gogglebox in their title, when they were only going to spend a few minutes with them all night.
Heidi Alexander says that the Tories have had sex scandals, and to be honest I can't actually remember any sex scandals. Were there any? Nicely, though, she says that JRM is kind, and won't say nasty things about him - although she does say he (and others) "believe their own bull****", slightly surprising given how every broadcaster has been dancing around Cracknell's scatological verbiage.
The speaker has held Chorley. How did it take them that long to figure that out, given that by tradition they run unopposed by the main parties? Labour have gained Erewash, another made-up place, this time surely a Samuel Butler novel. Fun fact: Dawn Butler is a direct descendent of Samuel Butler. Well, it's not a fact per se, but it is fun. Well, it's not fun.
2.45am
Great news! George Galloway has failed to keep his seat in Rochdale. It's only a few months since he won, and I guess the good people of that town have seen what he's actually like as an MP. He's not a man who gets re-elected a lot.
Edward Jonathan Davey - we're not getting the 'commonly known as' treatment in Kingston & Surbiton - has, unsurprisingly, kept his seat very comfortably. Embarrassingly the returning officer got the Labour candidate's name wrong. Considering they have one job every five years (or more frequently in the last few years, admittedly), you'd have thought she could have done her homework. Ed does his acceptance speech on a trapeze while juggling fire, while insisting that we take his policies seriously.
2.54am
Angela Rayner - she blocked me on Twitter before I'd heard of her, as I always tell people, and which Simon always insists is to with blocking swathes of people at a time, even though I've never worked out how one would go about doing that - has retained her seat, and is live from Dukinfield, which sounds like the least interesting Springwatch update possible. On Sky News she's sharing a split screen with Nigel Farage getting into a cab, and then live footage of him getting out of a cab mere seconds later. Somewhat surprisingly, he's come from a Greek taverna. Who knew that Clacton-on-Sea had such things?
The Tory party chairman Richard Holden "looked like he was sitting on the floor earlier, but he wasn't, he was on a chair." I don't know what that means. Anyway, the recount is happening, and some old guy called Neil - he's not appearing on screen, but I think it's actually Neil Kinnock, based on his accent - says he was in a recount that gave his mother chickens. I'm also not entirely clear what that means.
Comments
Post a Comment