As election night wore on, the fates of politicians from across the political spectrum hung in the balance – and some well-known figures were among the casualties and survivors.
Survivor: Amber Rudd, Hastings and Rye
It was a close-run race in Hastings and Rye, where after a second recount the home secretary, Amber Rudd, sneaked home with a majority of just 346 – down from 4,796 in 2015. A history graduate from Edinburgh, Rudd went on to work in investment banking in London and New York, setting up a freelance recruitment business before being elected as an MP in 2010. Her appointment as home secretary six years later marked a meteoric rise. She has been touted as a future leader of the Conservatives – a suggestion that may gain ground in the coming days.
Loser: Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrats (Sheffield Hallam)
Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader who was at the helm when his party was routed in 2015, has taken his fair share of political kickings. Thursday night delivered one more as his seat – one he had held for 12 years – fell to Labour.
Seven years after he became deputy prime minister and two after he resigned as leader of his party, Theresa May’s snap general election delivered a crushing blow – with Clegg losing his Sheffield Hallam constituency after failing to fight off a Labour surge. One of the biggest scalps of the night, Clegg couldn’t defend his slender majority of 2,353 in the South Yorkshire constituency, losing it to Labour’s candidate, disability campaigner Jared O’Mara, in a 4% swing to the party from the Lib Dems.
Clegg looked visibly saddened as the results were read out, facing the fact of a successful political career coming to an end at a time not of his choosing. In a speech following the result, he said it had been the greatest privilege of his political career to serve Sheffield Hallam as MP. Clegg urged politicians of all political stripes to work together to bridge divides that he said threatened to seriously damage the country.
“We must try and reach out to each other to find common ground to heal those divisions,” he said. “If we do not our country will endure unprecedented hardship.”
Winner: Zac Goldsmith, Richmond Park
Goldsmith regained his old seat of Richmond Park by the skin of his teeth, with a majority of just 45.
The environmentalist resigned as a Tory MP over his party’s support for a third runway at Heathrow and subsequently lost his seat to the Liberal Democrats’ Sarah Olney while running as an independent candidate less than six months ago. Olney ran on a pro-EU platform in the strongly remain-voting seat, while Goldsmith had campaigned to leave the EU.
He was a controversial selection for the general election after accusations by many, including some in his own party, that he ran a dog-whistle Islamophobic campaign in his bid to become mayor of London ahead of Labour’s Sadiq Khan.
63,462 votes were cast in Richmond Park on Thursday, a total of 79.3% of the electorate and up from 53.55% for last December’s byelection. Goldsmith won 28,588 votes to Olney’s 28,543. “I’m grateful to my constituents for having put their trust in me again. I hope that I will never let them down – we have the most special community in the world and representing them is an unimaginable honour,” he said.
Loser: Alex Salmond, Gordon
Alex Salmond is no stranger to the political rollercoaster. But it took another dip on Thursday night as he lost his Gordon seat to the Tories.
In 2015, the political bruiser managed to overturn a 6,500 Liberal Democrat majority in the Aberdeenshire constituency of Gordon – previously held by retiring Lib Dem MP Sir Malcolm Bruce. On that night, Salmond memorably said: “A Scottish lion is roaring tonight.” But on Thursday it seemed to have been tamed. The former leader of the SNP was ousted by Colin Clark of the Conservatives, who took 21,861 votes to the SNP’s 19,254. Following the result, Salmond said: “I’ve been in politics 30 years. Politics has swings and arrows and you must accept the democratic verdict of the people.”
Winner: Diane Abbott, Hackney North & Stoke Newington
Abbott claimed a 35,139-vote majority (75% of the total, and an increase in her majority of 11,000) a day after announcing that she was temporarily stepping down from her role as shadow home secretary due to ill health.
Abbott came under heavy scrutiny during the election campaign for a series of embarrassing media slip-ups on policing numbers and counter-terrorism strategy, but her move out of the spotlight was blamed by some on divisive attacks from the Conservative party and rightwing press.
“The Conservative party fought a campaign characterised by the politics of personal destruction,” she said in her acceptance speech. “And yet the British people have seen past that and in Hackney they have responded to Labour’s positive campaign that addresses the issues where it be the NHS, the housing crisis or the benefit cuts. We have fought a positive campaign and we have been vindicated.
“They said if we fought this campaign on a progressive manifesto we would be swept away by a Tory landslide. They said if we fought this election under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn we would be annihilated. But I am proud to say that the British people of all ages, classes, creeds and colours have rallied to a positive message and the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.”
Survivor: Tom Watson, Labour (West Bromwich East)
The seat of the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, was believed to be under threat, but Watson took 58% of the vote, increasing the Labour share by 7.8 points. Seeming to enjoy himself as the night progressed, he said that whatever the final breakdown of seats it was a “very, very bad result for Theresa May”. Watson accused the prime minister of running a negative campaign, adding that far from being “strong and stable” she was “weak and wobbly”. He said: “May said she was a bloody difficult woman. The public saw a woman who found it all a bit too bloody difficult.”
Loser: Angus Robertson, SNP (Moray)
Robertson has been a force to be reckoned with in Westminster, pugnacious as the Scottish National party’s leader in the House of Commons, but he lost his seat in Moray to the Tories as polls had predicted.
Robertson took more than half the votes from a 68% turnout in 2015, an election in which the SNP made sweeping gains across the board. Robertson had a 9,065 majority, with the Tories in second place, so Moray was considered to be a testing ground for Ruth Davidson’s success north of the border and whether her message of pro-unionist tactical voting had hit home. For weeks, polls had been suggesting that he would lose his seat to Tory Douglas Ross, the man he vanquished that time around. But after a real dogfight in the north-east of Scotland, Ross was triumphant, with Moray seeing a 16.5% swing to the Tories.
Loser: Jane Ellison, Conservatives (Battersea)
Battersea was the first major Labour success of the night, with the Tory minister Jane Ellison a bona fide high-profile scalp taken by Jeremy Corbyn’s party. The former public health minister had held Battersea in south London since 2010 and in 2015 saw her share of the vote increase by 5%, giving her a 7,938 majority. But Labour’s Marsha de Cordova pipped her to the post, taking 25,292 votes to Ellison’s 22,876 – a 10% swing to Labour in an area that was 80% in favour of remain.
Survivor: Mhairi Black, SNP (Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Mhairi Black has been the “baby of the house” – the youngest member of the Commons – since she pulled off one of the biggest shocks of the 2015 election and took Paisley and Renfrewshire South from the then shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander. Black has become a high-profile figure in Westminster, which she has repeatedly accused of being out of touch with the rest of the country. She faced a challenge from Scottish Labour newbie Alison Dowling and it was thought to be a close-run race, but Black held the seat for the SNP with 16,964 votes. That’s down 10 points on last time, but Labour in second place was also down four points. The Conservatives were up by 12 points to third. It’s Black’s second win and she is still only 22.
Survivor: Justine Greening, Conservatives (Putney)
Eyes were on Justine Greening, a minister and a high-profile woman in the Tory ranks, although her position was never seriously considered to be under threat. And she held on to her seat, but with a much reduced majority. Greening had a 10,000 majority after 2015 but on Thursday that was slashed to 1,500 – a whopping 10% swing to Labour.
Survivor: Jenny Chapman, Labour (Darlington)
The Conservatives had been hopeful of winning Darlington after the shock victory of their party’s candidate, Ben Houchen, in the Tees Valley mayoral election in May. But the sitting Labour MP, Jenny Chapman, took 50.5% of the vote, significantly up from the 42.9% she managed in 2015. The Tory candidate, Peter Cuthbertson, got 43.2% of the vote, up on the 35.2% he won last time. “I had no speech for this outcome. What a shock,” Chapman told the audience. “What I need to say to the people of Darlington is: you have stepped up. You’ve turned out in bigger numbers than last time and you’ve shown the country that you believe in a future for Britain that is not the one that was put on offer to you by the Tory government.”
Winner: Kirstene Hair, Conservatives (Angus)
The constituency of Angus has never voted anything other than SNP since being established in 1997 – until last night. Long a Tory target seat, four separate Conservative candidates failed to defeat the incumbent, Mike Weir, who replaced Andrew Welsh in 2001. But Kirstene Hair, buoyed by a 12.4% swing towards her from the SNP when she stood in Angus South at last year’s Holyrood election, won on the day in an extraordinary night for the Tories. Angus was only 126th on the Tory target list and was only one of six seats held by the SNP before 2015 – yet it saw a 16% swing from SNP to the Conservatives.
Winner: Vince Cable, Twickenham
Seeing Vince Cable lose Twickenham in 2015, a seat he had held for eight years, was perhaps one of the saddest scenes of the night. It was a huge scalp for the Tories, who poured money and manpower into winning the seat for Tania Matthias. But the Liberal Democrat veteran’s smile was restored in the early hours of Friday morning as he took back Twickenham from Matthias, with 34,969 to her 25,207 – a comfortable majority of 9,762.
Loser: Ben Gummer, Ipswich
The Cambridge-educated Ipswich MP, 39, was Theresa May’s Cabinet Office minister given the responsibility of compiling the Conservative manifesto. That may have proved his downfall. “One of the stars of the cabinet”, according to former chancellor George Osborne, he nonetheless lost his seat to Labour’s Sandy Martin, leader of the party’s group on Suffolk county council and a well-known figure in the town. Son of former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer and nephew of Peter Gummer, a PR supremo and close supporter of David Cameron, Gummer won the Ipswich seat in 2010 with the largest Tory showing for that seat since 1935 and held it in 2015 with a 3,733 majority. This time round Martin beat Gummer by 24,224 to 23,393, a tight majority of 831.
Winner: Jo Swinson (LD) Dunbartonshire East
Jo Swinson was a darling of Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems, becoming an MP for East Dunbartonshire in the Glasgow suburbs aged 25. But after a decade in which she rose from being Nick Clegg’s private secretary to become junior minister for employment relations and equality, she was unseated by a rampant SNP in Dunbartonshire East in 2015. She seemed poised to make a comeback by Friday morning as she took back her old seat for the Lib Dems from the SNP’s John Nicolson.
Survivor: Tim Farron, Westmorland and Lonsdale
Things looked a little hairy for Tim Farron, leader of the Lib Dems, after the polls had closed in Westmorland and Lonsdale. And it was close, so close that a recount was ordered, but Farron clung on and was declared victorious with a majority of just 777 votes. That’s down from the 8,000 he got in 2015, but he fared better than his old party leader Nick Clegg.
Loser: Gavin Barwell, Croydon Central
The Conservative housing minister Gavin Barwell – who once wrote a book entitled How to Win a Marginal Seat – lost his own last night. Barwell had a majority of just 165 but it was taken away by Labour’s Sarah Jones, who took Croydon Central with 29,873 votes to Barwell’s 24,221 – giving her a majority of 6,652. Barwell served as housing minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government after May became prime minister and was forced into a U-turn on a flagship Tory pledge to build “a new generation” of social housing. He became the third minister to lose their seat after Ben Gummer, the Cabinet Office minister, and Jane Ellison from the Department for Health.
Winner: Ed Davey, Kingston and Surbiton
Former Lib Dem cabinet minister Ed Davey, who lost to the Tories in 2015, regained the marginal seat, beating Conservative James Berry after a well-fought battle on the ground by Lib Dem activists. The former energy secretary had been tipped as a possible future party leader, but became the first ministerial scalp of the rout of 2015. This time round he achieved 27,810 to Berry’s 23,686 – giving him a majority of 4,124.
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