Labour and Tories say vote offers stark choice as exit poll imminent – as it happened

Our new results live blog is now ready to take you through the night (if you’re in the UK – daylight readers around the world are also very welcome). Join us via the link below:

• Britain has been voting in the first December general election for almost 100 years, with Boris Johnson hoping the result will give the Conservatives the majority they did not have in the last parliament, allowing him to implement Brexit on 31 January. Despite the weather, the day has seen people turning out to vote in large numbers in some locations, with constituents in multiple seats posting pictures of lengthy queues outside polling stations, particularly in London, and waits of more than half an hour to vote. My colleague Esther Addley has the story here.

• At the EU summit in Brussels some leaders have been saying they hope one party will be able to form a majority government after the election. Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach (PM), said:

The best thing for Ireland, for the UK and for Europe would be an end to the uncertainty, so whether that’s prime minister Johnson winning with a large majority, or remain parties winning a majority, we’ll work with whatever the outcome is.

What has been very hard to work with was a hung parliament that wasn’t able to come to a majority decision on anything. I just hope we’re not in that position tomorrow.

And Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said he would advise the next prime minister “to get a majority in the House of Commons and to be able to fulfil the agreements we decided on both sides.”

We are closing this blog now, but the coverage continues on our results blog. It’s here.

Here are some last-minute messages from the parties.

From Jeremy Corbyn

From Boris Johnson

From Nicola Sturgeon

From Jo Swinson

From the Brexit party

Good evening. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Haroon. This blog will be running until about 9pm, at which point we will launch a fresh one.

Here, fairly randomly, is some ‘how it’s going’ speculation from journalists.

From the Times’ Steven Swinford.

From the Daily Mail’s John Stevens

From the former Sun political journalist Steve Hawkes

12 Dec 201915.04 EST

Severin Carrell

Jackson Carlaw, the interim Scottish Tory leader, has had a spat on Twitter with Nicola Sturgeon and her Brexit secretary, Mike Russell, after he tweeted that he had voted this morning in his East Renfrewshire constituency, 12 days after stating on Twitter he had sent in his postal vote.

An eagle-eyed voter flagged the apparent discrepancy, to Sturgeon’s amusement.

Russell, the Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for constitutional relations, was more pointed.

He tweeted: “Eh? Surely not as voting twice would be a criminal offence. Whereas tweeting something that isn’t true for electoral effect is just crass and dishonest …”

Carlaw, who holds the contiguous Scottish parliament seat of Eastwood, protested to both Sturgeon and Russell he had just made two proxy votes, both for Tory candidate Paul Masterton.

East Renfrewshire is an SNP target seat, and is often a barometer of Scotland’s shifting political mood. The Tories took it from the SNP in 2017 with a 4,712 majority, while the SNP had taken it from Labour’s then Scottish leader Jim Murphy in 2015 in its remarkable landslide. The previous Westminster seat of Eastwood had long been Tory-held until Murphy won it first in 1997.

Talking of Southampton Itchen, and its majority of just 31, here is a picture of a queue from a polling station there:

And here’s a lovely, festive queue in Northamptonshire:

It’s a similar story in Leeds:

12 Dec 201914.53 EST

Severin Carrell

The election count in Orkney and Shetland, the UK’s most northerly and most dispersed constituency, relied on a eight-seater aircraft propeller-driven aircraft to bring ballot boxes to the count on Friday morning.

The constituency, which has 34 inhabited islands including the isolated Foula and Fair Isle, is the only one that relies on aircraft to transport ballot papers to a count.

A Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander operated by Loganair was due to take off from Sumburgh on the southern tip of mainland Shetland at 1am on Friday after all the archipelago’s ballot boxes arrive, for a 45-minute flight to Kirkwall, the capital town of Orkney 90 miles south.

Onboard was Jan Riise, Shetland’s returning officer, who will keep guard over its 30 ballot boxes.

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Problems have also been reported at Southampton University where the students’ union says at least 76 people have been turned away from the polling station despite being registered to vote.

A blogpost on the union’s website says:

We’ve received reports of multiple students being prevented from voting their local polling station due to an administrative error, meaning they’re not on their polling station list despite being registered to vote.

This morning, our VP education and democracy, Jo Lisney, experienced this first hand and was turned away from her polling station in Southampton Test. Jo says: “It was a shock this morning when I went to vote and was told I couldn’t. I had my polling card come through so I knew I could, but the people at the station showed me the list and it said ‘details deleted’. After this I called the Electoral Commission and they confirmed I can vote and told me to go back with my polling card but if it doesn’t work, call them again.”

Since then we’ve received at least 75 further reports of students experiencing the same issue.

One of the seats in the city – Southampton Itchen – was decided by just 31 votes in 2017, the Tories’ Royston Smith holding on to the seat by the skin of his teeth.

The union blogpost did add:

Despite these issues, we are thrilled to hear so many students are voting in the general election today.

In Liverpool, 48 voters were given ballot papers for the wrong constituency, the Liverpool Echo reports.

They were given papers for Wavertree, rather than Riverside, at a polling station that serves both constituencies.

Tony Reeves, Liverpool city council’s returning officer, told the Echo:

Due to a medical issue overnight, a key member of staff was unable to be present when it opened at 7am. The remaining staff took a decision to oversee both constituencies until a replacement arrived, to make sure voters were not turned away.

A short time later it was identified that 48 electors had accidentally been given a ballot paper for Wavertree, rather than Riverside and had voted in the wrong constituency.

He added that the votes wrongly cast would be declared null and void and that they were attempting to contact the voters in question to allow them to recast their vote.

12 Dec 201913.53 EST

Rory Carroll

They say never say never in politics, but Nigel Dodds says the DUP will never, ever support Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. The party’s deputy leader slammed the door on any conceivable deal, tacit or otherwise, to put Labour’s leader into Downing Street.

“Jeremy Corbyn is someone whom we could never support as prime minister,” Dodds told the Guardian.

Lest there be any doubt about conceivably backing a Corbyn-led coalition, Dodds used the word “never” four times.

For most unionists Jeremy Corbyn is a complete no no. We will never support Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. Jeremy Corbyn will not get our support.

Dodds cited the Labour leader’s positions on antisemitism, IRA terrorism, and a Scottish referendum.

Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister brings a lot of other things to the table which we could never accept … all those things would be anathema to the DUP and the people that we represent.

Dodds was speaking outside a polling station in Belfast North, where he faces a stiff challenge from Sinn Féin’s John Finucane.

By drawing a line down the Irish Sea, Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal betrays the DUP and arguably advances Sinn Féin’s goal of Irish unity, but Dodds still prefers Johnson to Corbyn.

He said the DUP could retain influence in Westminster and push for a new deal – as long as Johnson obtained just a slender majority.

It’s getting tighter and tighter and tighter. In 1992, John Major had a majority of 21 and he ended up depending on the unionist MPs in parliament. I think the DUP will be significant players in the next parliament.

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More pictures of queues are emerging as people make their way home from work.