General election live: party leaders join millions across the UK casting their votes | General election 2024

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

In her column today Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has come out batting for greeting a possible Labour victory with some enthusiasm. Here’s a taster:

If they had reservations about the Blair government, my parents kept them to themselves. My mother, who had never trusted Blair, certainly didn’t allow it to temper her joy that morning. Both my parents are socialists, voters the modern Labour party would regard as being on the far left – people whose votes, perhaps, they feel they could even do without. Both, like so many Labour voters, would later be disgusted over Iraq. Yet they knew then what I also know now in my bones, which is that people’s lives would be improved by a Labour government, even if it wasn’t quite the kind of Labour government you had dreamed of.

I saw my mother the other day, and we talked a bit about 1997. “Our lives,” she said, “would have been materially different under a Conservative government.” A year after the Labour victory, we would become a single parent family. We would struggle financially, but not as much as we would have done under the Tories. The support we received from the local authority as a result of my brother’s severe disability was life changing.

On social media, people have been sharing the images that they feel sum up the last decade and a half of government, from the Johnson administration’s pandemic parties to security tags on blocks of cheese, the Covid memorial wall, Grenfell Tower in flames. One person chose a screenshot of the gaunt little boy from the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary about child poverty, the haunting part where he says: “We try not to eat a lot in one day, even though most of us are really hungry.” Could you look him in the face and say that life won’t be any different for him and children like him under a Labour government? I couldn’t. It has to be.

Read more from Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett here: Pop the champagne, dance for your kids – if Labour wins, I’ll be celebrating like my parents in 1997

Alfie Packham

It is not a UK election day without numerous pictures of dogs at polling stations. So here are a few more from Guardian readers …

Emma Towers, who voted in the Southgate and Wood Green constituency, was joined by Freckles and Bugsy, who were bribed with treats to sit for this photo.

Philip Mountford, accompanied by Blossom the cockapoo, did a proxy vote for his daughter Hope, who is travelling around South East Asia and is now in Australia.

He said queues had already formed before 7am at the Bishops Cleeve Tithe Barn polling station in the Tewkesbury constituency.

Andrew Cleland, Cambridge was up early to vote with his Siberian Huskies, Reto and his son, Bruno. “Despite almost four years’ age difference, this is both of their first general elections. They feel ‘cakeism’ is an ideology worthy of further research.”

And one more from Gerry McLean, Camden Square, London. “It was as busy as I’ve ever seen a polling station, but it was very efficiently run,” he says. “I thought you might be short of pictures of dogs, so here is Camilla outside the London Irish Centre.”

• You can tell us what is happening where you are on polling day – and send a picture of your dog too – details of how to contact the team can be found here. We will also accept photos of more exotic animals out voting.

Alexandra Topping

An interesting polling day ding dong going on below the line at The Times this morning. There is disgruntlement among readers, who are less than happy that comments on its election leader – which grumpily sat on the fence and failed to endorse any party – have been switched off.

The Murdoch-owned Times stopped short of endorsing Labour when it finally published its final editorial before the election at 8.30pm last night – some hour’s after Starmer won the support of its stablemate the Sun – instead providing its readers with the resounding message of “Don’t know, really”.

After attesting that the Tories were dealt a bad hand, it adds that there were “many unforced errors” and acknowledges that “after 14 years in power there is much baggage.” It describes Starmer as “a sensible man, flexible and pragmatic, a patriot committed to his country’s defence” but says there are “warning signs” about a Labour government including “a disdain for aspiration” shown in its decision to close a loophole that exempts private schools from VAT and “Labour’s attitude to Trans rights”.

After some umming and ahhing it decides: “This newspaper wants the next government to succeed, and it will not be ungenerous in praise if that is the case. But Labour has yet to earn the trust of the British people. It has been sparing with the truth about what it will do in office and cannot ­expect an endorsement.”

Some of its readers were not best pleased. Initial comments under the leader included criticism of its editor Tony Gallagher, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Sun (with a little stint as deputy editor of the Mail in between). “Gallgher has penned a very long resignation letter,” wrote one reader. “Once the election is over would The Times consider getting a proper Editor back in?,” asked another.

Then, the comments were inexplicably switched off. Wily readers, determined to have their say, instead took to the comments section of the paper’s second leader, which carried the headline “We the People”, and argued that politicians needed to reconnect with the people they are paid to represent.

“And we, the readers of the Times, petition the editor to reconnect with the readership of this paper and its once vigorous independent-minded ethos,” wrote one reader. “So the Thunderer deems it necessary to switch off comments on its non-endorsement leader, after a stream of adverse comments. A leader, in which it fears for the freedom of the media. Hypocrites!,” added another.

Reader John Ness also reflected on the Times’ nickname of the Thunderer, established – according to the paper – in 1830.

“The irony is painful,” he wrote. “The Times election leader dithers and mumbles and then bravely decides to sit on the fence and then acts decisively to ban comments so that readers cannot point it out. It is election day but it is the date that the Thunderer became the Whimperer.”

Jessica Murray

In what must be one of the most unusual – and smallest – polling stations in the country, in the remote village of Winwick in Northamptonshire people will be casting their vote in the hallway of someone’s house.

But even though the ballot box is literally under her own staircase, 80-year-old June Thomas said she always casts her ballot by postal vote. She has already walked the 300 yards to the village post box and send her vote in.

She told the BBC: “I don’t think I’ve ever voted in my house – even though it’s the polling station. I can see why people might laugh.”

Her home, the Old School House which was the village school until 1947, has been the polling station for the area since 1990, and is one of only a few remaining private residences still used as polling stations across the country.

Thomas said she started voting by post as she previously worked as a polling station clerk elsewhere and didn’t have time to cast her vote in person – and has remained doing so ever since.

“I know it sounds funny but I’ve just kept using my postal vote and voting by post,” she said.

Green party of England and Wales co-leader Carla Denyer took a moment to sit down after casting her vote in Bristol.

PA Media reports she greeted photographers and reporters outside the church.

Denyer is standing in Bristol Central, which is one of four seats where the party hopes to win. In a message on social media Denyer said:

No need to guess who I voted for! The energy in Bristol today is electric! On the short walk to the polling station, I met 8 Green volunteers and heard “well done” and “I voted for you” from voters Thank you, everyone, and remember to bring ID to vote!

On its social media channels the Green party has claimed the vote of Leap the dog – although the Guardian hasn’t been able to verify whether they are on the electoral roll.

They have also been able to claim the support of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has been posing with a large vegetable that is occasionally wearing his glasses.

You don’t get this sort of content on the politics live blog every day, do you?

People across the UK have begun casting votes in a general election expected to sweep Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives out of power and usher in Labour’s Keir Starmer as prime minister.

Sunak’s messaging on the day of polling remained about encouraging Tory voters out to “stop the Labour supermajority” rather than positioning himself to continue in Downing Street.

Starmer’s Labour were pushing people to go out and vote for change. Opinion polls suggest Labour is on course to secure a big majority, but last night Starmer told supporters to “imagine a Britain moving forward together with a Labour government. That’s what we are fighting for, let’s continue that fight. If you want change, you have to vote for it.”

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, Scotland’s first minister John Swinney, and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth have all also voted. Davey, whose campaign has been marked by a series of extreme stunts, said “It’s a beautiful day. I hope lots of people come out to vote.”

An exit poll, published shortly after polls close at 10pm on Thursday, will provide the first indication of how the election has gone on a national level. These take place at polling stations across the country, with tens of thousands of people asked to privately fill in a replica ballot as they leave, to get an indication of how they voted.

If Starmer were to become prime minister, it would be the first time the UK’s leader has changed as a result of a general election since 2010, when David Cameron succeeded Gordon Brown. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Sunak himself all became prime minister after internal Conservative party mechanism rather than through a general election.

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has voted in Surbiton.

PA Media reports he said “good morning everybody” to the assembled media and waved to the cameras as he arrived at Surbiton Hill Methodist Church. A voter leaving the polling station wished Davey good luck.

Davey, who has certainly made a name for himself with his total dedication to eye-catching stunts this campaign, said “It’s a beautiful day. I hope lots of people come out to vote.”

Our picture desk put together this gallery of the best of Davey’s antics over the last six weeks. The Liberal Democrats are hoping that gains for them, especially in the south-west of England, combined with a Labour squeeze on SNP seats in Scotland, might return the party to being the third-biggest in the House of Commons.

Robyn Vinter

My colleague Robyn Vinter has been looking into just how some constituencies return their results so quickly on election night:

In most constituencies, counting the tens of thousands of votes cast during an election takes somewhere between five and eight hours, which means voters usually have to stay up very late or get up very early to discover the outcome.

Sunderland has held bragging rights for decades, being the quickest to declare at every general election between 1992 and 2015, and setting that record time of 10.42pm for Sunderland South in 2001.

The feat was described as a “military operation”, with the count masterminded by the returning officer Bill Crawford, who left Sunderland in 2015. Under his stewardship, ballot counters were sourced from local banks because of their speed with small bits of paper. And he would recruit sixth-formers from nearby schools, training them on how best to run with ballot boxes in their hands.

Read more here: Rapid results – UK ballot counters braced for race to declare first winner