Yahoo News Avoid the red wine and opt for BBC gravitas: A handy manual to surviving election night
“Once you make that decision on Thursday, there’s no going back,” Rishi Sunak wrote on X (née Twitter) this week, in an ominous warning to his followers. “Don’t do something you might regret.”
Wise words. Election night is upon us. The night ahead is a minefield dense with potential regrets, lurking in wait for the unwary citizen. With our handy guide, however – and not to be confused with our official hour-by-hour guide here – you can make the most of your evening.
The most important thing to remember is that election night is more a marathon than a sprint, which is to say it is a lot like watching the marathon. Consider that it lasts many hours, and that it features an endless parade of half-familiar TV personalities, popping up in random locations to interview exhausted figures. Some of the competitors are sad, grimly facing up to the future; others delighted; others realise they are unprepared for the task at hand. The agony, the ecstasy, the fancy dress – but enough about Jacob Rees-Mogg.
You get the idea. Pacing is all.
8pm: Dinner. Nothing too heavy, nor too spicy. When the Prime Minister urged you not to do something you might regret, he was talking about the vindaloo. It is also wise to hold back on the plonk. While “full to the brim of red” might be an accurate representation of the electoral map by Thursday morning, it is a poor policy if you don’t want to wake up from a stupor at 3am, hallucinating that Labour have won Sevenoaks.
As an aside, if you are letting your children stay up late, be sure to stock up on energy drinks in advance. If Labour do win, your little under-16 darlings will have to get strangers to buy their cans of Monster and Red Bull for them, as well as their vapes and booze.
After dinner, why not settle in for some family party games?
9pm: A round of “favourite moments of the Sunak government”.
9.05pm: “Stag-do activity or Ed Davey photo op”?
9.20pm: “Pin the policy on the Starmer” – players are blindfolded and must try to pin policies on a board without getting any nearer the picture of the Labour leader.
9.30pm: Tory musical chairs. Set out a chair for each participant, then while the music is playing quickly remove 80 per cent of them.
9.40pm: Begin family argument about which TV channel to watch. The terrestrial TV coverage doesn’t begin until just before the exit poll, but there are Wimbledon highlights on the BBC earlier in the evening. The BBC Two schedule seems to have been designed specifically with Rishi Sunak in mind, with a documentary about a lonely part of North Yorkshire followed by Live at the Apollo. If he doesn’t need a laugh at 9.30pm, he probably will just after 10.
Like a royal funeral or a penalty shootout, a general election can cry out for the gravitas of the BBC. Laura Kuenssberg and Clive Myrie are in the hot seats, Chris Mason will babysit the regional reporters and John Curtice will assume his usual Doc-Brown-in-Back-to-the-Future psephologist’s swingometer. But there are advantages to the commercial broadcasters, too: not least the opportunity to see the last ever junk food ads on TV.
Their coverage is a battle of the podcasts. ITV anchor Tom Bradby will be joined by George Osborne and Ed Balls, while on Channel 4 Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murthy welcome Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. You may want to adjust the channel depending on how funny the exit poll is. Osborne’s gleeful sneer may suit a complete Tory wipeout, while a more technical result might call for Stewart’s know-it-all gawkishness.
10pm: The exit poll. The most dramatic moment of the night. The ominous bongs, the po-faced announcement. The broadcasters will have been preparing like boxers, repeating “La-bour Ma-jor-ity” over and over again in the mirror until the cadence is just so, knowing that they are destined to become soundbites.
10pm-11.30pm: The phoney war. Arguably the most frustrating part of election night. The adrenaline of the exit poll number gives way to a doldrums while the counting gets under way. Assuming that their methodology hasn’t spontaneously combusted, the exit poll will be right to within a dozen or so seats either way. Nonetheless it is the job of the person making the announcement to have just the right amount of surprise in their voice, despite the outcome being widely predicted.
Apart from the obligatory footage of lines of people passing boxes of votes down a chain, like buckets of water at the Great Fire of London, there isn’t much of interest on TV over the next 90 minutes, which see the most intense pontification of the night.
Instead, why not start preparing for the Labour government? Take your children out of private school, book in for that hip replacement, order an electric car and begin drafting some pro-forma objections to the thousands of planning applications about to arrive on your doorstep.
11.30pm: Bingo begins as the cameras head around the country for the counts. As usual, they count the ballots fastest in the North East, where there is less to do for fun. This year, the new constituency of Blyth and Ashington is expected to be the first to declare.
Listen out for key phrases. One point for each of the following: “1997”; “Portillo moment”(bonus point if Michael Portillo himself is talking about it); “this is Just an Exit Poll”; “energy transition”; “cost of living”; “worried faces in the hall”; “we’re just hearing”; “the people have spoken”; “it’s turning into a bad/long night for”; “Canada-style wipeout”.
It is a night for unexpected stars. Tories on the way out will compete to seem humorously magnanimous in defeat, hoping for TV jobs. Incoming Labour MPs will be trying to look adult in victory, hoping for Cabinet jobs. Look out also for visibly drunk candidates of any stripe (see also: cantankerous speeches).
12.15am: If we haven’t had “Portillo moment” already (we will have), the term is sure to be used around midnight. The run-up to the Basildon and Billericay declaration, where Tory chairman Richard Holden is in a three-way battle against Labour and Reform to keep his corner of Essex blue, will be fraught with PMT (Portillo Moment Tension.) Swindon South will be expected not long after and could provide more PMT, as Sir Robert Buckland tries to hold on.
2am: Reform hour. For those interested in the fortunes of Farage, Tice & Co, 2am-3am will be critical, from the declaration at Castle Point in the Thames Estuary onward. Nigel Farage has never been one to shy from a night in the spotlight; expect him to be even more omnipresent than usual given the upness of his dander this week. Clear eyes, full pints, can’t lose*.
(*He could lose.)
2.30am: Galloway to go yet. No John or Ringo, but it is George versus Paul in Rochdale, where Big Brother’s preeminent purring cat George Galloway goes up against former political hack Paul Waugh.
3am: The Flood. 3-4am is when the results really pour in, perhaps starting in Chingford and Woodford Green where Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a cure for insomnia if ever there was one, is hanging on by a thread. The horrible paradox of election night as a spectacle is that as the TV gets more interesting, the overall result becomes more secure.
This is the moment to ask yourself the night’s big existential queries: how much do you care about Alex Chalk? If a Jeremy Corbyn falls in the forest and nobody is watching the BBC when it happens, does it still count? Does an apocalypse have to be witnessed live, or can it be enjoyed on catch-up with a cup of tea and a croissant?
These are questions for the individual. If at any point, however, you think Rishi Sunak has been retained as prime minister, it is time to head upstairs: you are asleep and dreaming. As tempting as it is to stay up all night, remember you want to be fresh for the biggest clash of the week: England versus Switzerland on Saturday evening. Don’t make a decision you might regret.
