Election results live – Scotland majority ‘a long shot’ says Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon has made her first public appearance of the day in Glasgow, arriving to the count at the city’s Emirates Arena.

Asked by reporters how she was feeling as results were coming in, the first minister said she was “extremely happy and extremely confident” that the SNP, which she is the leader of, was on track to secure “an historic fourth term”.

She did, however, admit that “a majority has always been a very, very long shot”, suggesting she is not hopeful the party will secure an overall majority at Holyrood when all results have been counted.

Our Whitehall editor Kate Devlin has more:

The SNP has narrowly held the Banffshire and Buchan Coast constituency, with Karen Adam taking 14,920 votes ahead of the Tories’ Mark Findlater on 14,148 votes.

Previously held by Stewart Stevenson, the SNP boasted a majority of 6,683 in the seat from 2016 but that has now been cut to just 772.

Labour’s Georgia Strachan won 2,169 votes while Liberal Democrat Alison Simpson took 1,071.

The SNP’s newest MSP claims concerns that accusations against her predecessor Mark McDonald could have impacted the party’s majority were “not something that crossed my mind”.

Jackie Dunbar, an Aberdeen City councillor who will keep that role until the next local election, won the Aberdeen Donside seat, taking 18,514 votes – a 51.6 per cent share – beating Conservative Harriet Cross and Labour’s Heather Herbert, who secured 9,488 votes and 5,505 respectively.

Mr McDonald won the seat for the SNP five years ago but quit the party in 2018 and was briefly suspended by parliament after being accused of inappropriate behaviour by three women.

“Mark worked hard for the constituency when he was an SNP representative and also when he was an independent,” she said following the result. “I never, never heard anything from anybody about it.”

Boris Johnson has said Conservative success in Hartlepool is down to the government “delivering” on Brexit and Covid measures.

Speaking in Hartlepool, the PM said: “What has happened is that they can see we did get Brexit done and, to a certain extent, they can see that we delivered on that. What people want us to do now is to get on with delivering on everything else.

“Number one is continuing the vaccine rollout, making sure that we go from jab to jab, to jab to jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Mr Johnson said the government has embarked on a “massive project” of “uniting and levelling up” the country.

“Every government has tried it to some extent but I don’t think any government has tried it as wholeheartedly as this government is trying,” he claimed.

Scotland’s deputy first minister John Swinney has retained his Perthshire North seat, polling a total of 19,860 votes and extending his majority over the Conservatives in the constituency.

Tory candidate Murdo Fraser came in second with 15,807 votes, with Labour in third place and the Liberal Democrats fourth.

Mr Swinney said he was “absolutely over the moon” to be re-elected to the Scottish parliament, adding:

“It is an enormous pleasure to see the prospects of the return of an SNP government for a fourth historic term, given the scale of the vote that my party is experiencing the length and breadth of the country.

“I pledge myself to do all that I can in the next parliamentary term to ensure the interests of the people of Scotland are safeguarded and supported and taken forward to ensure that the people of Scotland have a choice on their future as they should have.”

Boris Johnson is now speaking alongside the new Tory MP Hartlepool in the north east town. “What this means for me is that it’s a mandate for us to continue to deliver,” he said.

“If there’s a lesson out of this local election campaign across the whole country it’s that the public want politicians to get on with focusing on their needs and their priorities.”

It seems the turnout is up in the Scottish parliament election. Not surprising, perhaps, given the high stakes: Nicola Sturgeon wants a mandate for a referendum on Scottish independence.

So who will benefit? Polling guru Prof John Curtice says the SNP will be “worried” about Labour’s vote being significantly up in the first (highly populated) central belt seat.

The SNP held Clydebank and Milngavie, but the Labour vote was up by almost 10 per cent.

The SNP holds Clydebank and Milngavie, but again its vote is down, this time by 1.6 per cent. The Labour vote was up by almost 10 per cent in the central belt seat (once upon a time part of the Labour heartlands). Encouraging news for Anas Sarwar’s party?

The SNP also holds onto the Highlands and Islands, with its vote share dipping only very slightly.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has responded to the Hartlepool result and early local election defeats for the party. “We must offer a bolder vision to transform people’s lives and give them the confidence to strive for a more equal world.”

Meanwhile, Unite the Union boss Len McCluskey said he hopes Keir Starmer “learns the correct lessons” from the crushing by-election defeat in Hartlepool.

“People don’t know what his vision is. People don’t know what Labour stand for anymore,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Conservative Russell George has been re-elected in Montgomeryshire in the first Welsh Senedd result to be declared.

He polled just over 48 per cent of the total, with a 7,528 majority over Plaid Cymru’s Elwyn Vaughan. Both the Tories and Plaid boosted their vote share.