GENERAL ELECTION: Labour landslide and a Saturday count for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire

Counting at Highland Council’s centre in Dingwall

Constituents in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire must wait until Saturday to discover who is going to be their MP.

Counting of the votes was suspended on Friday morning due to an apparent discrepancy in the vote verification process.

The contest had already been subject to a recount, and staff – who had been working through the night at the count centre in Dingwall – have now been sent home prior to the process starting again on Saturday.

The verification process has two main purposes which are to ensure and demonstrate that all ballot papers issued at polling stations and all returned postal ballot papers have been brought to the count, and to provide the figure with which the count outcome must reconcile.

Returning officer Derek Brown said that a discrepancy was identified between the verified votes total and the provisional number of counted votes.

A recount did not resolve the issue, sparking the need for a second recount on Saturday.

In the newly created seat Drew Hendry, who had been SNP MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, is seeking re-election to Westminster.

However, LibDem sources have told the Free Press they are confident that their candidate, Angus MacDonald, has won the seat.

Mr Hendry, the former Highland Council leader, won his seat by over 10,000 votes in 2019, while Ian Blackford took the Ross, Skye and Lochaber seat by a similar margin.

Jamie Stone was successful on a good night for the LibDems

On a night when the Labour party secured a landslide victory throughout the UK, confirming Keir Starmer as the new Prime Minister, the SNP suffered heavy losses across Scotland.

In the Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency Liberal Democrat Jamie Stone increased his party’s share of the vote by 15 per cent as he won by over 10,000 votes from Lucy Beattie of the SNP.

Brendan O’Hara, who held Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber, was one of only nine SNP MPs returned to Westminster – a reduction of 38 from 2019.

Boundary changes meant the four constituencies which previously covered the Highland and Argyll council areas have now been reduced to three.

Torcuil Crichton has promised islanders a direct link to a new UK Government

In Na h-Eileanan an Iar Torcuil Crichton secured a decisive victory for Labour, polling just under 50 per cent of the vote in what is the UK’s smallest constituency in terms of the number of electors.

Mr Crichton, a former Free Press journalist, increased his vote share by more than 20 per cent. His majority was just shy of 4,000 over the SNP’s Susan Thomson.

Angus MacNeil –  who had won the seat five times for the SNP since first elected in 2005 – came third, standing this year as an independent candidate.

Reform UK – who secured the third largest vote share in the UK at 14 per cent – pushed the Conservatives into fifth place in the Western Isles.

In Scotland Labour has won 37 seats, up 36 from the last election, while the number of Scottish Tory MPs has been reduced from six to five. The LibDems, on a night when they enjoyed a national resurgence, have increased their number of Scottish seats from two to five, with one result still to go.

Overall, Labour have won 412 UK seats, the Conservatives 121, LibDems 71 and the SNP 9.

Reform UK, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party all have four MPs and six independents were returned – five of them in England and one in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere, across the Irish Sea Sinn Fein were the largest party with seven MPs elected.

Article by Keith MacKenzie