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Hour 9 (5am-6am)

5.01

All the people taking support away from the SNP "haven't stopped supporting independence" says Sturgeon, hypocritically. It's been a very long night for her. Mhairi Black, over on C4, is also reluctant to give Labour much credit. Still, it's their voters who are gathering in the Tate Modern (for some reason) with a lot of UK flags, a few Welsh and Scottish, and - so far as I can see - not a single English flag. Maybe the football fans had already nabbed them all.

Sky News are going full on in their 'Labour WIN' graphics, which I don't think the other channels are calling yet, but come on. "We're going to risk it for a biscuit" says Kay as they transfer to Rees-Mogg who, despite what I said about the massiveness of his rosette, actually has a smaller one than the green candidate. What is it about Somerset NE & Hanham and huge rosettes? Who cares, though, as JRM has been defeated comfortably by Labour's Dan Morris, winning by over 5,000.

5.10am

My parents' constituency has gone Lib Dem, news that Dad has greeted by messaging A-!+-@-,'x x ΕΊ. This is not, though, a sign of his disgruntlement - just an error, apparently - neither of my parents are prepared to vouchsafe who they vote for. 134 votes for the Communists, he tells me.

Keir Charmer's looked very refreshed in his victory speech, and more natural than he has throughout the campaign. "Service is the precondition for hope" he says, which I'm pretty sure does mean anything at all, but never mind, the flag-wavers are loving it. He's even quoting George Osborne. Will he say 'things will only get better'? He will, won't he?

No.

5.23am

Good news that, after over eight hours of watching this, we're about to get Danny Finkelstein. He's great. Before that, though, it's chaos with Ed Miliband. Well, not so much chaos as a big rose pinned to his lapel. And his former adviser, Baroness Hazarika, is in tears, claiming that Keir Charmer has performed a miracle. Listen, Hazza, I'm happy about the turn of events, but that might be going a little far: beating the Tory shambles wasn't really all that difficult, surely?

Over on ITV they somehow know that Tatton is a Conservative hold before Esther McVey's victory is announced by the returning officer, which means it's a bit of an anti-climax - but another great hat. Why don't any of the male returning officers have great hats? I blame the matriarchy.

Speaking of the matriarchy, Ros Atkins is in Norfolk where Liz Truss is predicted to lose. Yummy.

5.41am

I'm just catching up on Suella's speech, which started well but quickly got worse: "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry my party didn't listen to you." A truly awful Conservative, and the party should be apologising for her, not the other way round. Good news from Bromsgrove, though, where Bradley "Bradders" Thomas has been elected as Conservative MP, definitively meaning I'm now in third place in the list of most successful people in my school year at Prince Henry's with the surname Thomas. Ah well. A 30% drop in vote share - he's taken Sajid Javid's old seat - but a win's a win.

Sky News are saying that Labour's win is officially a 'landslide', which I think might be just as meaningless as a 'supermajority'. But it's certainly comprehensive in Wales, which looks like it will have no Tory MPs at all when I visit this weekend. Brighton Kemptown is also Tory-free, as Labour have won, and there was some confusion when the Green candidate Elaine Hills was given 7 votes in the onscreen graphic when they should have had 7,997. More confusion, in fact, because the BBC only went to the result because they thought it was Brighton Pavilion (expected to be Green), not its nonentity neighbour.

No sign of Danny Fink yet, even though he said on Twitter that he would be on shortly.

5.53am

On ITV - where I now need to enter a PIN every time I switch channels, because it's past 5am and the programme started after the watershed - Ed Balls has transmogrified into yet another woman in a pink jacket. No, wait, it's Margaret Hodge. Over on Channel 4, just to mix things up, they've got a woman wearing a pink dress instead of a pink jacket. I don't know who she is, but she wants electoral reform, so maybe she's a Lib Dem. Rory Stewart also wants electoral reform, but he's basically a Lib Dem anyway, so that makes sense.

Douglas Ross has lost "the only SNP gain of the night in that part of the world". Which part of the world? Scotland? I'm so confused.

Danny Finkelstein is here! Either I have been pronouncing his name wrong, or Clive is. He's lost a lot of weight. I imagine his diet tonight was better than mine (pizza and Milkybar buttons). Danny very chirpily says he's sad that a lot of his friends have lost seats, and keeps a straight face while saying that Liz Truss is competent in many ways. Plus, a woman from Ipsos who looks like Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl is saying... something. I think I might need to go to sleep soon. The way she says 'Scotland' makes me think she's probably Scottish. Does that help?

5.59am

Witney has gone Lib Dem, so Simon will wake to news that will please him a great deal. I'm going to head to bed now, having hoped that I'd be able to stay up for Truss. It's been yet another momentous night in British politics: a triumph for Labour, a disaster for the Conservatives & SNP, decent news for the Lib Dems and Greens, and somewhere in between for Reform. And a glorious day, as ever, for democracy.

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