Big names have lost their seats and ex-big names have won back old seats and basically here is a rundown of all of last night’s winners and losers
LOSERS
Theresa May Sure, she won back her seat of Maidenhead with a majority of 26,457, but she also had the cheek to call a snap election less than a year after the Brexit vote and only over two years since our last general election, with a bid to give her a stronger hand in Brexit negotiations. She ran a bad campaign - avoiding televised interviews and debates, barely turning up in some areas, and going on to lose in most areas visited by her ‘battle bus’ - and who knows how much holding Donald Trump’s hand impacted on this election. Also, as we’ve learned from Gordon Brown, who became Prime Minister after Tony Blair stood down in 2007, people don’t seem to like leaders who stroll into power without being elected.
Gavin Barwell
The Housing minister, who we communicated a lot with over our campaign to make renting fair, lost his seat in Croydon Central to Sarah Jones of Labour. Having only won it by 165 votes in 2015, he lost it by 5,652 last night.
Nick Clegg
In Sheffield Hallam, a student-heavy the former Lib Dem leader lost his seat. A firm Remain campaigner, many centrist pundits and supporters see this as a big loss. But students and young people who have long felt done over by Clegg’s u-turn over tuition fees (he said the Lib Dems wouldn’t raise tuition fees, made it a huge manifesto pledge…then went into a coalition government with the Conservatives and put them up anyway), see this as a victory. In a nice nod to Big Brother series 1, when Nasty Nick got caught rigging the votes, Nick (Clegg) said in his concession speech ‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword’.
Alex Salmond
Before Nicola Sturgeon, Alex was leader of the SNP. He now doesn’t have a seat, having lost in Gordon (that’s a place btw) to the Conservatives.
Amber Rudd
The Home Secretary, who famously stood in for Theresa May during the televised ‘leaders’ debates, won back her seat in Hastings by just 346 votes. Compare this to her previous win of 4,796 and the fact that she was once tipped to surpass Theresa May as leader of the Conservatives, it’s not exactly a victory to gloat about.
UKIP
The party’s leader, Paul Nuttall, only got 3,306 votes in Boston & Skegness, a hugely Leave area. He lost out to the Conservatives, who have hoovered up a lot of old UKIP votes across the country thanks to their promises of a strong and stable Brexit. Still, Nigel Farage has been invited back as a pundit onto the BBC, so it looks as if UKIP has retained its TV safe seat, despite having precisely zero MPs.
Angus Robertson
The leader of the SNP in the Commons lost his seat in Moray to the Conservatives, as polls predicted. Ruth Davidson, the charismatic leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, has a lot to be thanked for in helping this win along.
Jane Ellison Battersea is absolute yuppie central. But Ellison, a cabinet minister, lost her seat, perhaps due to her area being in Wandsworth, which voted 75% to Remain in the EU, yet her working under a government promising to steam through with Brexit.
WINNERS
Jeremy Corbyn
Six weeks ago, Labour were 22 points behind in the polls. But they just GAINED seats. Enough said.
Emily Thornberry
The former shadow foreign secretary, who won back her seat, was questioned late last night on whether Labour would go into coalition. Even though a coalition government would be an objectively decent win for Labour, she wanted to point out that no Conservatives had yet been brought onto the BBC to answer questions about a coalition at such an early stage, and boy, did she point it out:
Mhairi Black
The UK’s youngest MP was re-elected by 2,541 in Paisley and Renfrewshire South for the SNP, who otherwise lost over 19 seats. She might have halved her majority, but in short: Mhairi’s won two elections by age 22.
Zac Goldsmith
He lost both a mayoral and a by-election in the past 14 months, facing accusations of racism for his campaign against Sadiq Khan (which made some odd links between Khan and extremism) but he made his comeback, winning Richmond Park by just 45 votes.
****Vince Cable + Jo Swinson ****
These former big names in the Lib Dems have won back their old seats, and Jo Swinson is tipped to replace Tim Farron as leader of their party one day…maybe one day quite soon.
Stephen Gethins
No, us neither. But he won his seat in North East Fife for the SNP by just two votes. TWO votes. Tell that to anyone who says their votes doesn’t matter, ok? PS this has only ever happened twice before, in 1997 and 1931. And yes, someone did once win by one vote, Henry Duke in, um, 1910.
Women MPs
We have a record number of female MPs!
Democracy
We had the highest turnout since 1997, a turnout of 69%!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.