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EU referendum results: first results in as 84 pro-Brexit MPs back Cameron – live
EU referendum results: pound plunges as first results come in – live
(35 minutes later)
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12.37am BST
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Libby Brooks
Henry McDonald
With the ballot sampling under way, a pattern is now emerging in Glasgow, with middle-class areas voting decisively to remain while working-class areas like the east end are neck and neck with leave.
The leave campaign’s regional coordinator in Northern Ireland is holding on to the hope that working-class voters across the UK will turn around the Brexit camp’s fortunes. Lee Reynolds, a former Democratic Unionist party councillor, said there had been an unprecedented turnout in Ulster loyalist working-class areas.
Estimates of turnout around the country are solidifying around 70% – higher than last month’s Scottish parliament elections but less than the 2014 independence referendum. Turnout in Scotland looks like being a wee bit less than England but, having urged the electorate to the polling booths four times in the last three years, this is no great surprise.
“They are not voting in any large numbers for remain,” Reynolds said. “If the loyalist working class are voting like never before then what are their counterparts doing in England and like them, the English working class is for leave. People have to came calm down and let the votes be counted. I think the odds are even in terms of which side is going to be on the 52-48 split in the vote. It is far from over.”
I’m also told to look out for surprisingly high leave votes in solid SNP areas like Dundee and Inverclyde; perhaps prompting some soul-searching for the party’s high command.
12.36am BST
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, Ian Murray MP and SNP MP Anne McLaughlin at the Glasgow count pic.twitter.com/mhq4W1TtRt
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11.58pm BST
Five results are in (out of 382).
23:58
Here are the figures. It is the vote figures that count.
Jill Treanor
Areas
Sterling has slipped back from its highs against the dollar on talk that the Newcastle result will only be a marginal win for Remain, while Sunderland is said to be strongly leave. The pound is now at $1.4897, having earlier hit $1.5018.
Remain: 4
If Leave really win Sunderland by 20% and Remain win Newcastle by only small margin, upset back on the table.
Leave: 1
My colleague Jill Treanor is on the trading floor at currency trader WorldFirst. Its chief economist and head of currency strategy Jeremy Cook said: “These markets are so thin, so skittish, [the pound] could really come off on any thing.”
Votes
There is some chat that hedge funds had been doing their private polling to get one step ahead of the market. Cook too has heard about hedge fund exit polls and apparently people were being asked how they’d voted by financial analysts in some constituencies. “If a hedge fund had a scent of something sterling would have been hit a lot harder,” Cook says. A veteran of late night election campaigns, Cook says this is the classic time for rumours to start while count comes in. “If a hedge fund had a scent the market had mispriced this and a leave vote was likely sterling would be a lower than this”.
Remain: 158,536 (49.5%)
Leave: 161,744 (50.5%)
12.34am BST
00:34
Ben Quinn
Arron Banks, the millionaire backer of Ukip and co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, says he is “feeling quite confident, strangely.”
He dismissed the significance of the result from Newcastle after it declared for remain, telling Sky News: Newcastle … That’s a metropolitan Labour city. It’s still all to play for.”
Pressed on Sky News about Nigel Farage’s earlier comments that remain appeared to have edged the result, Banks said: “I think he has conceded, re-conceded … you know Nigel. Honestly, I still haven’t got a clue. I think once we start seeing some of the bigger results we will know.”
12.31am BST
00:31
Philip Oltermann
British emigrants in Berlin are gathered at the legendary Volksbühne theatre tonight to watch the incoming first results.
An overwhelming majority has voted remain – but not all of them did enthusiastically. Peter Vine, a 27-year-old research analyst, who recently moved to the German capital from Taiwan, said he was a reluctant Remainer. “I don’t understand why the European Union has to be so political. I can see the advantages of a trade union, but I don’t understand why we need a European parliament, for example. All this expensive bureaucracy seems excessive when countries like Greece are told to tighten their belts.”
In the end, he said he was swayed by the economic argument. “All those quangos and international bodies – they can’t all be wrong”. If leave had presented a more coherent argument, he said, he may have voted to leave. “I don’t feel European. I feel British, and maybe global.”
The latest reports from Sunderland suggest (contrary to earlier claims) that Leave is heading for a big win.
Mark Tran
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg says Leave could be on 62%.
In Wandsworth, Rosena Allin-Khan, who succeeded Sadiq Khan, as Labour MP for Tooting, is predicting a 65-35 margin of victory in her constituency.
Laura K has a source that says Sunderland could be 62% Leave
“It’s looking good from the sampling,” she told the Guardian. Right on cue, an official with a sampling sheet came over showing 75 votes for remain and 17 for leave. Earlier, a Tory campaigner in Putney predicted a 60-40 margin of victory in his constituency. All three MPs in Wandsworth – Allin-Khan, Justine Greening, the international development secretary and MP for Putney, and Jane Ellison, the Conservative MP for Battersea – have campaigned for remain. Wandsworth is strong remain territory and the only question is the margin of victory.
This is from Matthew Goodwin.
Allin-Khan said she found some confusion among remain voters because the government had been so “woefully divided”. Labour voters by contrast felt Jeremy Corbyn had been vocal about remain.
Hearing early indications of 66% Leave vote in Sunderland which would be a strong result for them. In models it's predicted to be 53% #euref
Labour MP Ronena Allin-Khan at count in Wandsworth: "It's looking good" for Remain #EUreferendum pic.twitter.com/u8QOu0APAq
And this is from Glen O’Hara, another academic.
Greening is also reporting a big majority for remain based on the sampling she’s seen – about 75-25. “That seems much more categorical than I expected,” she told the Guardian. “It’s a combination of London being more international and the immigration debate really jarring on people.”
A very bad result for #Remain in Sunderland might not be catastrophic. We may just be more divided than we thought. But it isn't good.
On whether the death of Labour MP Jo Cox had been a factor, Greening – who knew Cox from her humanitarian work – said: “It made people sit up and think and the vote was their first chance people had to show how they felt.”
And this is from the BBC’s Richard Moss.
One set of counted votes in Sunderland #EUref. Leave piles generally bigger but by how much? pic.twitter.com/ARg5XXvGQ4
11.54pm BST
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A minute’s silence in memory of Jo Cox has been held at various counts. Here is a video of one of them:
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Nigel Farage has told reporters that the ‘Eurosceptic genie is out of the bottle’. Here is the video:
With 5 results in out of 382 in the EU referendum, turnout is 67.21%.
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At a Leave.EU party in London, a cake shaped like a champagne bottle is waiting to be cut. John Crace has some more about the party – and its rather low turnout – in his politics sketch.
The Leave victory in Sunderland has sent the pound plunging, down 3.5% to $1.435.
11.49pm BST
Sunderland in graph format #EUref pic.twitter.com/eqNW6MMkSV
23:49
Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital said: “The pound is plummeting as Sunderland votes heavily for Leave. Markets are very nervy at the moment as the polls – and the markets - could be wrong. The Sunderland result has definitely altered the tone of the evening and markets are getting very choppy.”
This is from the BBC’s Nick Eardley.
The FTSE 100 is now also called to open lower by spread betting firm IG:
Vote Leave source says samples so far in Glasgow and Falkirk better than expected for them #EUref
IG's out of hours market for the FTSE now at 6240 -1.5%
11.46pm BST
23:46
Henry McDonald
Alasdair McDonnell, the SDLP MP for South Belfast, has told the Guardian the turnout in his constituency is “touching” 70%. The Social Democratic and Labour party MP said he is hoping in Northern Ireland the final vote could be 60-40 for remain.
Speaking inside the Titanic visitor centre, where the votes from the four Belfast constituencies are being counted, McDonnell said the SDLP wanted “to avoid turning the referendum into a traditional Orange versus Green contest”. He added: “We wanted this to be a civic campaign that cut across the traditional political divide. We had good meetings with the Ulster Unionists and a pro-EU business breakfast. The remain vote is a cross-community vote.”
He declined to speculate on the future of the pro-Brexit Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers, who has conceded defeat on Sky News.
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On Sky News Nigel Farage has just given what sounded a bit like a concession speech (even though he insisted that was not what it was.) I will post the key quotes in a moment.
Randeep Ramesh
11.43pm BST
The count was halted in Bristol after fire alarm set off. The counting officer sent out staff. Vote Leave joke about being worried about what will happen to their ballot papers. It’s a false alarm.
23:43
Count halted in #bristol #euref after fire alarm set off pic.twitter.com/8BaRVV2XX7
The first result is in, from Gibraltar. It is a massive vote for Remain.
Remain: 19,322
Leave: 823
Remain were always going to do well in Gibraltar. Gibraltarians worry that, if the UK were to leave the EU, crossing the border into Spain would become much more difficult - a vital issue for the many people who need to cross it every day.
11.41pm BST
23:41
Ben Quinn
Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, has fired yet another coded salvo at the leader of his own party, emphasising that he would like to see a party after the referendum that was “optimistic” about change and not go back to the 1950s.
Asked what the future of Ukip would be if the referendum result was for remain, he said he believed there would be many people after the campaign “in all parties” who perhaps feel that the leaders of their parties “have more in common” with each other than with ordinary people.
“They perhaps feel that the leaders of their parties on the issue of Europe and many other things have more in common with one another in Westminster than they do with ordinary folk across the country,” Carswell told the BBC.
The MP has frequently clashed with Farage in the past and at one point last year called on him to resign in order to draw a line under its image.
“I think many people will conclude that politics is a cartel and that we need to break that cartel and we need new upstart parties like Ukip to break that cartel. If Ukip is an optimistic party that wants change and that looks to reshape the country for 2030, 2040, not go back to 1950, we can be that change.”
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Helena Bengtsson
Leave win in Sunderland by more than expected
Contrary to what you might be thinking, the UK may not be the most Eurosceptic of the EU’s member states. Helena Bengtsson has this:
Leave has won a big victory in Sunderland.
Despite Britain teetering on the edge of Brexit, polling suggests it may not be the most Eurosceptic state in the EU. A poll of 10,000 Europeans across 10 countries by Pew Research earlier this year found that a majority of people felt unfavourably towards the union in both Greece (71%) and France (61%). Spain also had a higher proportion of unfavourable people (49%) than the UK (48%) did.
Remain: 51,930 (39%)
Related: Is Britain the most Eurosceptic country?
Leave: 82,394 (61%)
Leave were expected to win here, according to the Hanretty figures, but not by a margin as big as this. It looks as if the early remain optimism was premature.
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This is from Sky’s data expert Harry Carr.
The SNP’s Humza Yousaf says he is “quietly optimistic” of a vote to remain.
Turnout so far suggests overall turnout of roughly 70% - winning line therefore roughly 16.25 million votes