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‘Rishi will hold onto his seat’ says Green rival

The count underway at Northallerton Leisure Centre. Photograph: Tim Lichfield

Kevin Foster, the Green candidate for the Richmond and Northallerton constituency, said he believed Rishi Sunak would hold onto the seat.

Mr Foster, a North Yorkshire councillor and the first candidate to arrive at the count in Northallerton Leisure Centre, said: “I think Rishi will hold on by between 7,000 and 5,000 votes.

“I think there are still some people sympathetic to him and the alternative is just not there for them. I think they are reluctant but they have come out reluctantly to vote for him. That is my feeling knocking on the doors, but it is really hard this one.”

Mr Foster, wearing a dark green suit and a Greens rosette, also spoke of the disruptive influence of Reform UK on the election, telling PA: “Basically, Reform has got the bottle, shook it up, and we are all over the place, and I have heard that from other parties as well.”

Mr Foster is North Yorkshire Council’s armed forces champion. He served as an army reservist between 1985 and 2015, and spent six months on tour in Iraq in 2003 as an army chef.

He shares his name with the Conservative candidate for Torbay in Devon.

First report from PM’s constituency of Richmond

Here’s Tim Lichfield reporting live from Richmond & Northallerton, the constituency of the current PM Rishi Sunak

Video: The first ballot boxes arrive in York

Here’s the first votes arriving in the sealed ballot boxes… It’s quite a rush!

First ballot boxes arrive at York

Ballot boxes arrive at York Racecourse during the general election count in July. Photograph: YorkMix

Here are some of the first ballot boxes arriving at the count at York Racecourse tonight. They arrived at 10.13pm.

A silver Mercedes was the first to arrive, with boxes from the YO1 postcode. They were quickly taken in to the counting tables which are on the ground floor.

Ready to count the votes at York Racecourse

The exit poll – Labour landslide predicted

Screengrab: BBC

The exit poll’s out – and it is predicting a Labour landslide.

The projection shows Labour with 410 seats.

The Conservatives are set for 131 seats.

The exit poll also forecasts the Liberal Democrats on 61 seats, Reform UK on 13 and The Green Party on two.

In Scotland, the SNP are expected to secure 10 seats with Plaid Cymru in Wales on four.

It would be the lowest number Tory MPs on record.

How Selby & Ainsty voted in the 2023 byelection

It’s the second time in just over a year that the voters of Selby & Ainsty have been to the polls.

A byelection took place on 20 July 2023, following the announcement on 10 June that the Conservative Party MP, Nigel Adams, was standing down from Parliament with immediate effect.

The swing to Labour was a big shock for Rishi Sunak and the Tory government. When Keir Mather took the seat he was just 25, the youngest MP in the Commons, and therefore ‘Baby of the House’.