´óÏó´«Ã½

Election results 2017: The bubbles we missed

  • Published
Emily Maitlis at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ election results screen
Image caption,

Emily Maitlis reported on the results as they came in on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ election screen

Glancing up at the big screen in studio D at Elstree, I see the rather glum face of Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster.

It reminds me suddenly of a conversation we had a month or so ago.

He told me, and my ilk, to "get outside the bubble" and I had laughed because here he was, a Tory MP in a safe seat in central London - a man who literally had a Westminster village that comprised his constituents at his feet.

By the bubble, he meant, I assume, the vast numbers of people outside London, around the country, voting Brexit, or UKIP or hoping - he would have thought - to put the Conservatives on a huge majority.

But there was another bubble and we both missed it. A bubble of young, excited, Remainers or at least anti austerity-ers who would even put his seat in the kind of precarious position he would never have dreamt of.

As I write, we still await the result from Kensington. It doesn't get more True Blue than that - and yet Kensington has already, I hear, been twice recounted.

They've now suspended further counting as a result of drooping eyelids at the count.

Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,

A hung parliament is not what many Conservatives were expecting

The very notion that Kensington could turn red is the stuff of nightmares for the Conservatives. It is the kind of shifting tectonic plate that signals the opening up of the ground.

But here's why it's not impossible. Kensington only needs an 11% swing by Labour to turn it red - a heavily Remainer seat with a vocally Brexit MP.

And we have seen those swings in London in many places overnight...

In Putney, a swing away from Education Secretary Justine Greening of nearly 10%.

In Chelsea and Fulham a swing of 9% and in Westminster North - a Labour seat which returned its MP with a swing of 11% to Labour.

Suddenly that gloomy face on the screen makes sense. Sleepless yes, but also shocked perhaps to his very core.