A massive swing from the SNP to Labour in Scotland paved Sir Keir Starmer’s victory path to Downing Street.
Labour, which went into the election with just two MPs north of the Border, had won 37 of the 54 seats declared by 9am, with three seats still to declare.
The SNP lost 38 seats, leaving it with nine MPs. Former SNP leader for First Minister Alex Salmond said the Nationalists had been “absolutely gubbed”, a Scottish term for being heavily defeated.
Polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice said Labour’s “spectacular” rise in Scotland had delivered its victory nationwide, as its share of the vote had not changed by much in England.
Nicola Sturgeon, the former First Minister, said it was “not a good night for the SNP”.
She told ITV: “This is at the grimmer end of the expectations. This is not a good night for the SNP on these numbers and there will be a lot of questions that need to be asked.”
Mr Salmond, speaking on Channel 4, appeared to blame Ms Sturgeon for the defeat, saying her successors Humza Yousaf and Mr Swinney had been left a “poisoned chalice”.
He said the SNP in had latterly failed to display competence in government nor a strategy for independence. “Chaos and incompetence dates back three or four years,” Mr Salmond said.
As the polls closed at 10pm, Sir John Curtice’s bombshell national exit poll predicted the SNP would only win 10 seats.
A week earlier, a poll by Savanta had the SNP and Labour neck and neck with 34 per cent of the vote.
But the first signs of a political earthquake came when Labour ousted the SNP from Kilmarnock and Loudon, which the Nationalists had previously held with an 12,600 majority.
It was the party’s fourth safest seat but the East Ayrshire town fell to Labour with a 22 per cent swing.
Labour went on to claim every SNP seat in Glasgow and Edinburgh. First Minister John Swinney told the BBC: “It’s a very poor result for the SNP.”
Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, said: “It’s an incredible and historic night here in Scotland and across the UK.”
In the 2015 election, at the peak of its popularity, the SNP won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland. Boundary changes cut the total to 57 constituencies in yesterday’s election.
Among the Labour victories was former international development secretary Douglas Alexander, who won Lothian East. Outlining the scale of Labour’s achievement in Scotland, he said: “The SNP has been in power longer than the iPhone has been invented.”
But the SNP did gain Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, where Douglas Ross, the outgoing leader of the Scottish Tories, had decided to stand.
With three seats still to declare, the Tories had won three seats, down one, and the Lib-Dems five, up three.
Mr Ross had sparked controversy by contesting the seat in place of former Tory MP David Duguid, who was barred from standing by party bosses due to ill health.
Mr Ross blamed his defeat – by less than 1,000 votes – on the presence of a Reform candidate who polled 5,562 votes and allowed the SNP to “win through the back door”.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn was re-elected in Aberdeen South and Kirsty Blackman retained her Aberdeen North seat.
Mr Flynn said the SNP had been “swept aside by the Starmer tsunami”. He said: “Nobody was expecting this scale of defeat. It’s fairly seismic.”
