General Election special
The best news and analysis on the night that shocked Britain
SHORTLY after midday the Conservatives on the ground began to hear suggestions of a huge turnout in Labour areas.
“I’ve just got off a call with our field campaigners around the country,” a senior official said in an email to Tory supporters.
“They’re telling me we’re seeing huge numbers of people turning up to vote – and we predict a lot of seats are going to be very tight.”
Sir Craig Oliver, formerly David Cameron’s director of communications, said: “The team that’s done this exit poll has got it right more often than it hasn’t. That is right on the cusp. Every seat is going to count.
“If this is accurate, in CCHQ there will be deep and lasting shock. This is the biggest gamble a politician has taken for a long time and if the exit poll is right it will have failed.”
Across the country there were reports of significant numbers of people turning out to vote, with 15-minute long queues in some seats.
Some of the biggest polling station queues were reported at universities, where Labour is hoping that the student vote will help it turn round the polls.
There were long queues at the University of East Anglia, where Labour’s Clive Lewis won the last election with a slim majority, and the University of Warwick in the Labour marginal of Coventry South.
It was reported that voters at Keele University were being turned away from polling stations despite being eligible to vote because officials were using an out-of-date register.
Other long queues were reported in London, Leeds and even Kidderminster.
Within minutes of the exit poll landing, senior figures in Labour could not resist celebrating, despite the party’s official line being to downplay the result of the election.
According to the poll, Theresa May was on course to secure 314 MPS, 12 shy of an overall majority.
Senior Labour figures said the poll was right “within a spread of 15 seats”.
Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, accused Mrs May of “hubris”, saying: “I think we’re on a verge of a great result. I think she should go, because she has manifestly failed.”
Polling experts said that it appeared turnout was up among people who do not normally vote such as the young, who were criticised for not voting in last year’s European Union referendum.
Professor Michael Thrasher, Sky News’s election analyst, said: “The kinds of people that haven’t been voting in the past do appear to be voting in this election.”
That “appears to point towards” younger voters having turned out to support Labour, he said.
In Tory ranks, the exit poll was met with dismay. Ministers had been suggesting that they would be disappointed with a majority of anything less than 50 amid anger at the way the campaign had been run.
Senior Conservatives were quick to downplay the result, insisting that it was early in the night and pointing out that the exit poll had been wrong before.
There were reports that senior ministers’ seats looked under threat.
Tory sources told the BBC it looked like Treasury minister Jane Ellison had lost her Battersea seat. It was claimed that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, could lose her seat in Hastings where she had faced a strong local campaign.
Ben Gummer, the Cabinet Office minister who co-wrote the party’s manifesto, appeared to be at risk in Ipswich.
There was a ray of hope from the early results from seats in Sunderland and Newcastle in which the Tories increased their vote share, defying the result in the exit poll.
Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, admitted that the exit poll could have overstated the swing against the Tories, judging by the five seats that had declared by midnight.
Ken Clarke, the former justice secretary, said he thought the Conservatives would have a “small overall majority” adding “we are obviously going to have a very interesting parliament”.
Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader, said he had seen “a real uptick, possibly even a surge” in the Labour vote in Sheffield.
He said: “It’s clearly a complete boomerang election for the Conservatives who when they started out in this election campaign were treating it as something of a coronation.”
The reaction among Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters was jubilation. In a bar on Shoreditch High Street in London, a Labour stronghold, drinkers punched the air.
“How can you not love Corbyn?” shouted one. “He cares,” said another.
“After the referendum and Brexit, we didn’t want to take any chances,” was the general feeling.
The stream of celebrities staking a claim in the election on social media may also have swayed opinion.
Neil Hamilton, now the leader of Ukip in the Welsh Assembly, acknowledged that the party had been “squeezed”.
The exit poll was a far cry from expectations at the start of the day.
As Mr Corbyn arrived at a primary school in north London to cast his vote yesterday morning, he had a message for the assembled press: “I’m not going to disappear,” he said with a smile.
Less than half an hour earlier Mrs May had been joined by her husband Philip at her local polling station in Maidenhead, Kent, saying little more than a cheery “hello” to reporters.
Her appearance, however, was anything but understated as she wore her favourite leopard print shoes and a statement chain necklace.