Sarwar ‘confident’ of Scottish majority as former minister returns

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has said he is “confident” his party will win a majority in Scotland.

Speaking as he arrived at the Glasgow count, Mr Sarwar said the push for change will begin on Friday.

It comes as his party beat the SNP in the early results in Scotland, with substantial swings to Labour.

“I’m confident we’re going to win this election in Scotland and I’m confident we’ll have a majority in Scotland,” he said.

Among those winners was former minister Douglas Alexander, who will return to Westminster for the first time since losing his previous seat in 2015.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party has taken Kilmarnock and Loudon, West Dunbartonshire, Paisley and Renfrewshire South and East Kilbride and Strathaven in the early hours of Friday morning, each with substantial swings between the two parties.

But the early story was found in Lothian East, where the former international development secretary won with 23,555 after losing his seat in 2015.

The results come as the BBC/ITV/Sky exit poll predicted a 170-seat majority for Labour across the UK, with the SNP dropping to just 10 seats, and a party source suggested it could lose all three of its seats in Edinburgh.

Lillian Jones took Kilmarnock and Loudon from the SNP’s Alan Brown, winning 19,065 votes.

Mr Brown had held the seat since 2015.

Just minutes later, Labour won the West Dunbartonshire seat from the SNP, unseating Martin Docherty-Hughes, with Douglas McAllister taking 19,312 votes.

While Johanna Baxter won 19,583 to defeat the SNP in the seat vacated by former deputy Westminster leader Mhairi Black.

Elsewhere, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn was re-elected in Aberdeen South and Kirsty Blackman retained her Aberdeen North seat.

Meanwhile, former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon – reacting to the exit poll being released – said: “This is not a good night for the SNP on these numbers.

“I think there will be a question about whether there was enough in the campaign to give out, effectively, a USP to the SNP in an election that was about getting the Tories out and replacing them with Labour.”

Speaking on ITV, she added: “This is at the grimmer end of the expectations for the SNP if the exit poll is right and, from what I’ve said earlier on, I expect it will be.

“This is seismic for Labour. There’s no getting away from that, it’s a massive achievement for Keir Starmer.”

The SNP’s campaign centred around calls for talks on another independence referendum if the party won a majority of seats at the election.

Despite the exit poll result, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes told the BBC: “I would strongly caution anybody against dismissing the robust, resilient and significant number of people in this country that support independence and the next Labour government will have to contend with that, we’ll have to listen to Scottish voters because even over the last few months – which have been difficult – that support for independence has remained strong.”

But she added the party would need to “listen to the voices of voters” and “set out our agenda to regain and rebuild the trust of the voters across Scotland”, she said.

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross told the BBC the exit poll predicts a “historically bad” result for the Tories across the UK.

He said he does not regret his last-minute decision to stand in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, but predicted an “extremely close” result.

Speaking from the Aberdeen count, he said: “It is a historically bad night, there is no shying away from that at all and there will be a huge amount of reflection on the campaign and also clearly the last few years.

“It has been particularly difficult and there’s no denying that and whoever forms the next parliamentary party will look at the options going forward and will assess the current state of play in the Conservative party and how it rebuilds after this election result.”

He said he does not regret his last-minute decision to stand but predicted an “extremely close” result.

The exit poll predictions signal voters had a “desperate need for change”, a Scottish Labour MSP has said. Glasgow MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy said the exit poll predicted a “strong” result for Labour.

She told PA: “It was a strong exit poll. I think that the country has been saying for some time now that they’re fed up of the 14 years of Tory chaos.”

She added: “There’s really been a desperate need for change and we’ve ran a really strong, positive campaign and I’m so proud of it.”

Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said the exit poll was a “hopeful” sign for his party at a UK level where it predicted two Green MPs.

Speaking to PA from the Glasgow count, he said any gain from the one English seat the Greens won at the 2019 general election would be “something to celebrate”.