The key takeaways from the night that upended British politics
By Connor Parker
This has been an election of many trends large and small combining into one thread: the complete upending of British politics.
Less than five years after Boris Johnson's stomping victory over Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservatives faced the worst night in their history.
The collapse of their vote meant seats once considered rock-solid Tory strongholds have abandoned them.
But this Tory rout has not automatically meant a huge swing to Labour, rather an insurgence of smaller parties and independents has created a muddled picture of a polarised UK.
Here are some of the trends that were revealed throughout the night.
The mortgage holder vote abandons the Conservatives
The growth in mortgage rates in recent years has exacerbated the cost of living crisis for many families that would be traditionally seen as more middle class and make up the core of the Conservative vote.
The anger over Liz Truss's disastrous 'mini-budget' and the gradual rise in the Bank of England's base rate has been blamed by many on the Tory Party and this has played out in the election.
ITV News Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana analyses the mortgage holder swing away from the Conservatives
Prior to the election, the 30 seats with the highest percentage of mortgage holders were all Conservative.
The exit poll data suggested by the time all of the votes are counted they would lose all but six of these seats, with five going to the Lib Dems and the rest going to Labour.
Voter turnout and vote share strangeness
Labour has for several elections struggled to even out its vote.
It was always very good at piling up ballots in single seats creating huge majorities but struggled to spread these votes out across enough constituencies that matter.
This election has flipped that old mantra on its head with Labour increasing its vote share dramatically in seats it usually struggled with tipping them over the line just enough to secure a huge number of wins.
Labour has successfully spread its vote share into seats that matter but has lost huge numbers of votes in safe seats
But in their safe seats the opposite has happened, with many left-wing people unhappy with Starmer's centrism Labour has lost a significant amount of its vote share.
In 42 seats identified as safe for Labour by ITV News their vote share actually fell by 12.4%, more than enough to flip a marginal.
The vote has mostly gone to the Greens scooping up 10%, but independents and Reform have also seen a large increase in their share.
This trend is also playing out in the national vote share Labour has secured with most projections putting them between 37-38% of the vote share, down from 2017's 40%.
The total turnout is also expected to be lower at 58-59% compared to 2019s 67.3%.
Reform shakes up the political landscape
The biggest shakeup of the General Election campaign was Nigel Farage's dramatic entrance into the race, making a bad situation for Sunak catastrophic.
Reform saw its popularity increase throughout the campaign and the exit poll predicted they would win 13 seats - far more than many had expected.
However, the real result looks set to be a lot lower.
Early in the night, Farage appeared over the moon as the results came in, saying the results from the first counts were "almost unbelievable."
The moment Lee Anderson retained his Ashfield seat
Their night got off to a strong start with Tory defector Lee Anderson comfortably maintaining his Ashfield seat and Deputy leader Richard Tice winning his seat in Boston and Skegness.
After winning on his eighth attempt at entering Parliament Farage declared it was not a "protest vote" and called for electoral reform.
It was not all good news for Reform, in Barnsley and Hartlepool, which they had been predicted to win, were secured by Labour with comfortable majorities.
But arguably the biggest winners of Reforms surge were Labour.
In seats across the country, the same story was repeated: Reform splits the Conservative vote and Labour wins the seat.
In over 120 of the seats the Tories lost the Reform vote was greater than the Conservative's defeat.
This vote split in some seats dramatically lent its way towards Reform with the Labour vote barely shifting.
Reform is expected to come second in a massive 155 seats
In Darlington, a core red wall seat the Labour vote only increased by 0.3%, but the Conservative vote plummeted 15.9% with most of that going to Reform (12.5%).
It was a similar story in Nuneaton - a bellwether seat that has backed the winning party since 1997.
There the Tory vote fell a dramatic 32.1% with 5.4% going to Labour and a massive 22% going to Reform.
The trend helped unseat top Tory ministers with former leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt losing after her vote collapsed by 26.9% with 10.3% going to Labour and 15.9% going to Reform.
The growth of Reform has been so successful the exit poll expected they would come second in a massive 155 seats, up from UKIP's 120 in 2015.
Lib Dems and Greens enjoy fantastic night
Although Labour was the winner of the night the Lib Dems and the Greens enjoyed some of the best elections in their history.
After the Lib Dems were routed in the 2015 election they have been languishing with only a handful of MPs in Parliament.
But in recent months after a number of stunning by-election victories they have been on the up and they carried this momentum into the election.
The exit poll predicted they would win 61 seats, a five-fold increase compared to the 2019 election.
Another party to enjoy a good night was the Greens, who dramatically increased their representation in Parliament.
They won several of their target seats, starting with Bristol Central being won by co-leader Carla Denyer who beat the Labour shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire.
Debbonaire had previously held onto the seat comfortably but she was crushed in this election with the Greens getting more than 10,000 votes and 57.7% of the vote.
The party's other co-leader Adrian Ramsay won Waveney Valley, knocking out the Tories with a gigantic 32.4% swing.
The party also unseated a previous Tory stronghold after strong tactical voting saw them elected in Herefordshire North.
They increased their vote share in the affluent and rural seat by a dramatic 34.4% with the Tories losing 31%, Labour 8.9% and the Lib Dems 10.6%.
Ed Balls describes the threat the Greens and the left presents to Starmer's Labour
In many seats that Labour held onto in affluent urban and inner city areas, they saw their vote percentage fall with significant jumps for the Green Party.
As Starmer moved Labour to the centre and adopted a similar platform to Sunak's government on Israel and Gaza many left-wing voters chose to turn towards the Greens and independents.
In South Shields, the comfortable Labour seat saw its vote percentage fall from 44% to 41% with the Greens recording an 11% increase, overtaking the Conservatives putting them into fourth place.
In Islington South Labour held on comfortably but their vote share fell by 3.3% and the Greens saw their vote surging by 13% and put them comfortably into second place.
Muslim vote turns away from Labour
In seats across the country where there is a high percentage of Muslim residents, candidates running on a pro-Palestine ticket took huge numbers of votes off Labour.
The most shocking was senior Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth losing his Leicester South seat to independent Shockat Adam after he won 35.2% of the vote, mirroring almost exactly the 35.3% drop in the Labour vote.
Next door, Leicester East Labour saw its share of the vote drop by 30% leading to a rare Conservative victory despite their vote also falling 7.5%.
Pro-Palestine independents also beat Labour in Blackburn and Dewsbury & Batley, with an independent in the latter securing almost double the vote of second place Labour.
Rising star Wes Streeting was also almost unseated by an independent and held onto his seat by just 500 votes with several other Labour MPs just clinging on.
The rise of the independents is one of the biggest stories of the night
In five seats identified by ITV News as having large Muslim populations, the Labour vote was down by 15.6%, with the Conservatives down by 13%.
Eating into this vote was a huge 15.1% swing to independent candidates, with the rest going to Reform (7.8%) and the Greens (5.9%).
The traditional Labour vote was split between several independents including two former Labour MPs who were expelled for misconduct, both standing on a pro-Palestine ticket.
This insurgency was seen in Starmer's own seat where independent Andrew Feinstein knocked more than 10,000 votes off the Labour leader's 2019 vote and came second in the seat.
Feinstein stood on a pro-Palestine ticket that endorsed Corbyn's version of the party and ended lowering Labour's share of the vote by 17%.
Corbyn himself also comfortably won in Islington North.
Where the vote was effectively split between the independents and Labour several Conservatives benefit.
In Chingford and Woodford Green Conservative Ian Duncan Smith held on to his seat after the Labour vote was split.
Starmer's team rejected the former Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen who is popular with the left leading to her running as an independent splitting the vote.
SNP completely routed
The only party that performed possibly as bad as the Conservatives after the election is the SNP. They have lost almost 40 seats and will end up with less than 10 MPs.
Nicola Sturgeon gives her verdict on a difficult night for the SNP
After dominating Scotland's Westminster representation for almost a decade, they have been effectively replaced by Labour.
Many of the races were on a knife-edge but the swings all went in Labour's direction.
Despite the SNP's defeat, they still attracted around 30% of the vote, so they are far from eradicated.
First Minister John Swinney accepted his party had a "very poor" performance and pledged the SNP would engage in "soul searching" to repair trust with voters.
In one piece of good news for the SNP, they defeated the former Scottish Conservative Leader Douglas Ross in Aberdeenshire North and Moray after he sparked huge controversy over his decision to run.
Anger at the ruling government may have been a theme of the SNP in Scotland and the Conservatives in England, but the opposite was true for Wales.
In Wales, the Tories were completely wiped out losing all 12 of their seats, with nine going to Labour, two to Plaid Cymru, and one to the Lib Dems.
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