Liz Truss and the moment of truth.
Thank you…. I love this so much
Lol the lettuce will never not be funny.
No reaction at all? Weird.
The candidates are told the results off-stage a few minutes before they're announced - so the announcement wasn't a surprise for her. The announcement was actually delayed several minutes because all the candidates were lined up on stage waiting and Truss was nowhere to be seen, and the audience started slow-clapping her - I think her reaction probably happened locked in a toilet cubicle during that break.
Then after the Labour winner gave his victory speech, she just wandered off-stage and out of the venue instead of giving the customary concession speech...
Oh, that's somehow much more satisfying
She does do a double-blink at the moment of impact.
Lovely. If only this would lead to personal growth. But, modern conservative thinkers are forbidden from such.
This is very good. Only unfortunate thing is that the tories are still the second party which means power dynamics won't change that much, imagine if they got to third place behind the green party, now that would have brought a decisive shift. But this is certainly a very happy day in any case.
The Lib Dems got 71 seats (potentially 72 as one Lib Dem/SNP marginal is yet to declare), which is the best haul of a third party since they were led by HH Asquith in 1923 - it actually wouldn't have taken a lot of poll movement from here to make the Lib Dems the 2nd party (several of the MRPs and polling averages during the last few weeks of the campaign had suggested this was possible). 71 was in the upper range of expectations for the Lib Dems, but Labour and Reform ultimately underperformed in Lab/Con and Ref/Con contests, which seems to have saved the Tories scores of seats. Electoral Calculus's final projection was Lab 470, Lib Dem 71, Con 61 - that would have even more dramatically changed the dynamic of British politics by making Ed Davey leader of the opposition with all the tools that come with it (leading the questioning at PMQs, more select committee chairs, etc).
No chance of the Greens ever overtaking the Tories though - they are a very small party who are pretty much localised to the 4 seats they won, which they threw all their resources and campaigning into. None of the projections showed them winning more than 4 seats because those are the 4 they've spent years cultivating.
