General election 2024 live: Farage wins with Starmer set to be next Prime Minister - results in full

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been elected in Clacton, winning a UK parliamentary seat at his eighth attempt. He won more 20,000 votes in the Essex constituency.

Farage said his Reform party’s performance in the General Election was “truly extraordinary”, adding: “There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.” He said it was “the first step of something that is going to stun all of you” and “we are coming for Labour”.

The Labour candidate in Preston Sir Mark Hendrick is feeling fairly confident about tonight's results, Sofia Ali writes in from Lancashire.

“Generally speaking it’s very positive,” he told Sofia. “I’m quite optimistic that I will hold onto my seat, but we will have to see.”

He said: “14 years of Conservative government have meant that we have got a situation where there is a cost of living crisis, a quarter of children are in poverty, people can’t afford their gas or electric bills, they can’t get a mortgage. The country just doesn’t work anymore and that will take time, not just one term but probably two.”

Speaking of the last 24 years he has spent as Preston’s MP, he said: “I think it’s done a lot to help build up trust, probably a third of Preston’s population have either had some contact with me or I’ve helped in some way. I think on the whole my record is good, I stand by my record and hopefully tonight it will bear fruit in that I will be re-elected.”

We’ve had a few more results come in, with two Liberal Democrat gains and the first Tory hold of the night. Lola McEvoy also won Darlington off the Conservatives.

Keep up to date with all the results on our interactive map.

It’s set to be a triumphant night for Angela Rayner in her Ashton-under-Lyne seat - but the result isn’t expected for sometime yet.

Another update from my colleague Tabitha Wilson in Bassetlaw. The former Labour MP John Mann, who is married to the Labour candidate Jo White, is expecting his party will win. Reform had been tipped to triumph in the exit poll.

A further breakdown of voting figures in Bassetlaw has revealed that turnout was 78.15% for postal voters, and 52.15% for those voting in person – quite a large disparity. Mann, the UK government’s advisor on antisemitism and former Labour MP for Bassetlaw, feels apathy is to blame for the decrease in turnout.

In the next few hours, Sir Keir Starmer will become the UK’s next Prime Minister.

The general election exit poll has given Labour 410 seats, with a majority of 170 over the Tories. Later today, Starmer will go to Buckingham Palace and ask the King to form the next government. Starmer has been to Buckingham Palace before, but he is arguably the most working-class Labour leader since Neil Kinnock, and the only one who was knighted for public service before getting into politics. 

To some he’s a flip flopper who cannot make up his mind, while to others he’s changed the Labour Party for the better, winning an election for the first time in almost two decades. But who is the man who will be the UK’s next Prime Minister?

I spoke to Tom Baldwin, the author of Keir Starmer: The Biography, to find out more about the Labour leader, his upbringing, what he believes in and what he might be like in power.

My colleague Joe Barlow has spoken to Liverpool Walton’s Reform UK candidate Joseph Doran about his party’s potential success tonight. He said it would give them the power to “push through most of our policies, and begin to make us a more recognized party”.

In response to the allegations that a Reform UK campaigner called Rishi Sunak a “f*****g p**i”, Doran said: “Some candidates might have racial views, I can't comment on that. But there are genuine candidates like myself.

“I work with people from different multicultural and different colours of skin. You know, my wife's black, and I've got not got a racist bone in my body”. 

In regards to his leader’s recent label as a Putin apologist, Doran said: “Nigel [Farage] basically said he spoke his mind. And I think what he said was a fair reflection of what a lot of people are thinking at the moment.

“A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon and said, you know, he's puppet for Putin, but that's total nonsense. He ... spoke the truth”. He added that Farage is “definitely not” a Putin apologist.

My colleague Maddie Lake is at the count in Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg’s old seat. Maddie writes:

There is a high level of anticipation at The English Institute of Sport Sheffield. Most candidates are yet to show their faces. Lord Mayor Jayne Dunn has arrived as a returning officer for four of the seats. An announcement has just been made to say:  “We are still opening late postal votes there is fairly large amount of postal it’s anticipated to take around 45 minutes before all the postal votes can be opened and counted.”

I’ve heard that the Lib Dems are feeling confident that they might have taken this from Labour. We’ll bring you more as we get it.

I’m at the counts in Waltham Forest, north-east London, tonight, to see if Iain Duncan Smith can hold on to his seat. This was a constituency that Labour was expecting to take, given the former Tory leader’s wafer thing majority.

That was complicated when Labour deselected their candidate Faiza Shaheen over historic social media posts. Shaheen is now running as an independent and when I was out speaking to voters last week, a lot of people were favouring her over the new Labour candidate, Shama Tatler, who is a councillor in Brent on the other side of London.

Speaking to Labour sources at the count, they say it’s “tight” but reckon it’s “early days”. Not the positive signs you’d expect. While the Tories think Shaheen might take enough votes off Labour to keep Duncan Smith in post.

One of the themes of the election so far is low turnout. In Liverpool Riverside, the turnout is just 45.6%, which is what you would expect in a by-election. Could voter ID have had an impact?

Votes are still being verified in Preston, Sofia Ali writes, with the last of the postal ballots about to be brought in, before the actual count can begin. Counters are going to be working through the night to deliver the result, expected at around 3.30am. It is believed that Labour will once again hold the seat as they have done since 2000. Despite this, Conservative candidate Trevor Hart appears in good spirits, walking around, watching the counters work, laughing with the media team and having pictures taken.

My colleague Jack Dean is in Portsmouth to find out if Penny Mordaunt can cling onto his seat. Jack writes:

The count is underway here in Portsmouth. The Guildhall will host the count and declaration for the Portsmouth South and Portsmouth North parliamentary seats. The current Portsmouth MPs will be in for contrasting nights, despite being under the same roof. Labour’s Stephen Morgan, who has been the Portsmouth South MP, hopes to see his 6,000 majority increase, aiming to secure a spot in Keir Starmer's first cabinet.

Meanwhile, Penny Mordaunt, once seen as the potential heir to the Tory leadership throne, will now be hoping to wake up tomorrow morning with a job, as her 16,000 majority looks under threat to Amanda Martin, the same Labour candidate she beat in 2019.

My colleague Joe Barlow is in Liverpool, and he’s spoken to Labour’s Liverpool West Derby candidate Ian Byrne who is expected to hold onto his seat. Joe writes:

Byrne tells me the gigantic exit poll gives Labour a “huge mandate for change”.He says: “What an opportunity we have to reverse 15 years of Tory austerity, and we have to grasp it.” It’s true. Labour could win a bigger majority than any previous Labour government. But is Keir Starmer the man the country should entrust with the keys? “Keir Starmer has the opportunity to put his name in history,” Byrne says. “The mandate he’s been given, the scale of the victory to reverse the destruction of what we’ve seen to our country.”

The Conservatives “haven’t looked after the interests of the country and the public have turned around and said you do not deserve power,” Byrne adds. When asked about the party’s policy on Gaza, Byrne says: “We make the decisions that guide the country so let’s make sure we do the right thing.”

Labour’s Chi Onwurah has been re-elected as MP for Newcastle Central, but there was another big swing to Reform UK.

The Tories are facing a tough time in Wales. The Welsh Secretary David TC Davies has already conceded his seat in Monmouth. It could be that Craig Williams, the gamble-gate candidate who has been suspended by the Tories, is the only Conservative-linked candidate to remain as a Welsh MP.

Our Manchester World team are stationed in Manchester, Stockport and Tameside - the latter including Angela Rayner’s Ashton-under-Lyne seat.

At the count in Bassetlaw, my colleague Tabitha Wilson writes that Labour are “cautiously optimistic”, despite Reform’s unexpected success in the exit poll and in declared constituencies. A spokesperson for the party told NationalWorld that the exit poll “didn’t take into account the postal vote”, but “we won’t know until we get the final result.” She added that there had been a good result on the doorstep today, saying it was the most positive reaction she’d ever seen.

Reform’s candidate and team are yet to make an appearance at the count, and Labour’s prospective candidate Jo White is also not in attendance yet. Currently, only the Liberal Democrat candidate, Helen Tamblyn-Saville, and the Conservative candidate, Brendan Clarke-Smith, are here. 

My colleague Sofia Ali has written in from Preston, where Labour is expected to hold the seat. Sofia writes:

The count is underway at Preston Guild Hall and there are 10 candidates standing. The three main candidates are; Sir Mark Hendrick, who is hoping to hold the seat for Labour, Trevor Hart who is running for the Conservatives and Neil Darby who is hoping for a Liberal Democrat gain. Hendrick first became Preston’s MP in 2000 and has been re-elected ever since.

He is expected to hold the seat tonight. Running for UKIP is Dereck Killeen. Isabella Metcalfe-Reiner, a postgraduate student at Lancaster University is running for the Green Party. James Elliot is standing for reform, David Brooks is an independent candidate from the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom. Michael Lavalette and Yousuf Bhailok are both running independently, Bhailok is a multi-millionaire property developer and one of the richest people in Preston. The final candidate is Joseph O’Meachair for the Rejoin EU Party.