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

Keir Starmer is expected to win by a landslide. The BBC’s exit poll predicts Labour will win 410 seats, with the Tories left on just 131.

The Lib Dems are predicted to win 61 seats, with Reform UK the fourth largest party with 13.

Shortly before polls closed, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “To the hundreds of Conservative candidates, thousands of volunteers and millions of voters: Thank you for your hard work, thank you for your support, and thank you for your vote.”

Rishi Sunak has rewarded his right-hand man Liam Booth-Smith with a peerage, announced less than an hour before polls closed in the General Election.

Lord Booth-Smith, who had been Sunak’s chief of staff in Downing Street, was included in the Prime Minister’s dissolution honours list.

Former prime minister Theresa May, ex-Cabinet minister Chris Grayling and former chairman of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady will also take seats in the House of Lords.

Former deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing and ex-MP Craig Mackinlay, who has battled sepsis which cost him his hands and feet, have also been given peerages.

Former Cop26 president and Cabinet minister Sir Alok Sharma has also been made a peer.

There is less than an hour until polls close, so if you haven’t voted make sure you do now.

I’m at Kings College London’s elections event, where I’ll bring you some expert analysis on the exit poll when it drops at 10pm. But until then we’ve been listening to the thoughts of Baroness Louise Casey, a crossbench peer, and Lord David Willetts, a former Tory MP and peer.

Baroness Casey said she doesn’t expect Labour to win by a landslide, which would go against almost every pollster. She told the audience: “I doubt there will be a landslide tomorrow for anyone.”

She also said the left would have to tackle immigration, crime, housing and social care, and that it couldn’t keep ignoring it.

Lord Willetts said the election campaign had been a disaster, and said that whoever the next government is they should try and improve the UK’s relationship with the EU to boost growth.

Kemi Badenoch has attacked the local council in her North West Essex seat for having “potentially disenfranchised” thousands of postal voters who have not received their ballots.

The Cabinet minister said up to 2,600 voters were affected by Uttlesford District Council “forgetting” to send them their postal votes.

Writing on X on polling day, Ms Badenoch said: “Five years ago, all but four Conservatives on Uttlesford council were voted out. People wanted ‘Change’. Instead, they got ‘Change for the WORSE’, electing an independent residents group who ran a blame-the-Tories campaign.

“The community is now saddled with a council leadership unable to carry out basic functions competently… Now they’ve potentially disenfranchised up to 2,600 postal voters by FORGETTING to send them their ballot papers.”

On Thursday, the council said packs had been sent out by the end of last week and a majority of 2,688 postal votes had been successfully returned.

The exact number of ballots returned will be published by the council after the count in the interests of transparency, it said. The council’s chief executive, Peter Holt, had last week said he was “mortified” and apologised for the error.

He said the council had been delivering postal ballots by hand in a bid to resolve the matter, but warned a close result on election night could be challenged if a large proportion are not returned.

There is speculation this could thwart any bid by Ms Badenoch to stand in a Tory leadership contest. If she wins her seat by a narrow margin, Labour could challenge the result and demand a re-run.

This could result in a by-election, with Badenoch not considered an MP until its conclusion and therefore prevented from running in a Conservative Party leadership race.

Badenoch is seen as a frontrunner to replace Rishi Sunak should he lead the Conservatives to defeat. Having won a 27,594 majority in Saffron Walden in 2019, she is fighting for re-election in the redrawn North West Essex seat.

Read all about the runners and riders to replace Rishi Sunak here.

Are you planning to stay up all night or get some tactical sleep? These are the key races and timings to look at for overnight.

10pm Polls close and the exit polls will be released. This should give us a good indication of the result, and the potential scale of victory.

11.30pm The first constituency is expected to declare, Blyth & Ashington in the North East.

12.15am We should get the results of Basildon and Billericay, where Tory chairman Richard Holden is standing. He switched seats from County Durham to Essex to the fury of Conservative activists, many of whom are hoping he loses to Labour. Robert Buckland, the former Tory Justice Secretary, may also lose in Swindon South.

1am Rutherglen is the first Scottish seat to declare and this should give us a good idea of whether Labour or the Scottish National Party will come out on top.

2am Essex North West Kemi Badenoch’s seat is expected to declare. There have been postal vote issues here and if the result is tight there could even be a by-election held. Labour think it’s very close. Peterborough is another bellweather that is expected to declare around 2am, that Labour is hoping to win.

2.30am Keir Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras seat is expected to declare. If the polls are correct this may be the first time we hear from the UK’s next Prime Minister.

2.45am Aldershot is a key target seat for Labour. If they win this then you know they are on for a really good night.

3am Results will start to flood in across the UK. This is the earliest we could get confirmation that Labour has won a majority, if the polls are accurate. Chingford and Woodford Green is expected to declare around then, where former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith is hoping to hold on.

3.15am Bristol Central is expected to declare around now. This is a seat which Labour’s Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire could lose to Green co-leader Carla Denyer. David Cameron’s old seat of Witney will also declare. If this goes to the Lib Dems then you will know the Tories are on a bad night.

3.30am Frome & East Somerset is expected to declare, another seat Ed Davey’s party is targeting. We should also find out whether Tory big beast Penny Mordaunt can hold onto Portsmouth North. There are also a load of marginal constituencies in the West Midlands that are expected to declare around 3.30am.

4am There are murmurs that Rishi Sunak could be in trouble in Richmond and Northallerton. A sitting Prime Minister has never lost their seat. We’ll find out Sunak’s fate at around 4am.

6.30am There will be a steady flow of results from 4am until 6.30am. This will include Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North.

If you have yet to cast your vote, you have just over an hour left to get to your polling station and put you cross in a box.

Arriving on horseback is of course optional.

Exit polls are surveys conducted at polling stations immediately after voters have cast their ballots. At around 144 polling stations across the UK, tens of thousands of voters are asked to fill in a replica ballot paper in private to indicate how they voted. This process provides an early snapshot of the election results before the official count is completed.

While exit polls are not perfectly accurate, they have often been more reliable than pre-election opinion polls, particularly in the 2015 and 2017 elections.

Exit polls are published shortly after polling stations close at 10pm and provide a critical early indication of the election results. They are widely anticipated by the media, political analysts, and the public for their quick insight into the election outcome.

We’ve been reflecting on some of the bizarre moments from the six-week long election campaign and have also looked back on some of the funniest political stunts gone wrong from elections past.

So grab a cuppa and take a look at these unforgettable moments in general election history.

Even on polling day, I know thousands of people across the country will still be making up their minds. My colleague Tabitha Wilson has put together this handy guide on the main parties’ policies.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have voted in their constituencies.

This is the first general election in which voters will have to bring photo ID with them. In April 2022, MPs passed a new law making voter ID mandatory. The move was highly controversial, with widespread concerns that many could find themselves disenfranchised because they do not own ID.

The introduction of voter ID is designed to prevent voter personation, the crime of impersonating someone else when voting. But the Electoral Reform Society has said the crime is “vanishingly rare” – there were only three convictions and six cautions between 2015 and 2020, according to the Electoral Commission – and that photo ID is a “solution looking for a problem”.

While voter ID has been required for local elections, this will be the first UK wide election it is required. The ID does not need to be in date, but the photo will need to be a true likeness. It will be up to polling station clerks to judge whether your ID looks like you.

The full list is as follows:

Winds of up to 40mph are set to hit the UK as voters head to polling stations, my colleague Tom Morton has written in.

Showers are also expected across west and northwest Scotland, northwest England and across Northern Ireland on Thursday, the Met Office has said.

Southeast England will experience the brightest, warmest weather with areas around London expected to reach temperatures of up to 22C. Chillier weather is predicted further north with most of the day’s rainfall expected in northwest Scotland, the forecaster said.

Liam Eslick, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “It’s going to be quite a windy day across much of the UK. The strongest winds are going to be towards Northern Ireland, the western parts of Scotland and northern England – so we could see winds getting up to around 35, maybe even possibly 40mph, especially around the coasts of Scotland. It’s going to be a windy day for most people but it is going to be bright for central and southern England as well as Wales.”

Good morning and welcome to NationalWorld’s general election live blog. We’ll be bringing you all the latest news and analysis as voters head to the polls to elect the UK’s next Prime Minister. Our reporters will be at counts across the country tonight, with the latest results as they come in.

Get in touch with your views on the election by emailing [email protected].