Northern Ireland’s first minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, has cast her vote today at St Patrick’s primary school in Coalisland.
Northern Ireland first minister Michelle O'Neill casts her vote. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
PA Media reports that asked by photographers for a thumbs up, she laughed and said: “Will a smile do?”
As she left the polling station, she shouted goodbye to local children and waved to voters.
In a message on social media today, O’Neill said “Every vote will count today. Vote Sinn Féin to help shape a brighter future for everyone who call this place home. For positive change, strong leadership, and a commitment to work for all.”
She also called on “people to support progressive candidates in constituencies where Sinn Féin is not standing, ensuring the maximum number of progressive MPs are elected,” adding “Let’s work together.”
If they had reservations about the Blair government, my parents kept them to themselves. My mother, who had never trusted Blair, certainly didn’t allow it to temper her joy that morning. Both my parents are socialists, voters the modern Labour party would regard as being on the far left – people whose votes, perhaps, they feel they could even do without. Both, like so many Labour voters, would later be disgusted over Iraq. Yet they knew then what I also know now in my bones, which is that people’s lives would be improved by a Labour government, even if it wasn’t quite the kind of Labour government you had dreamed of.
I saw my mother the other day, and we talked a bit about 1997. “Our lives,” she said, “would have been materially different under a Conservative government.” A year after the Labour victory, we would become a single parent family. We would struggle financially, but not as much as we would have done under the Tories. The support we received from the local authority as a result of my brother’s severe disability was life changing.
On social media, people have been sharing the images that they feel sum up the last decade and a half of government, from the Johnson administration’s pandemic parties to security tags on blocks of cheese, the Covid memorial wall, Grenfell Tower in flames. One person chose a screenshot of the gaunt little boy from the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary about child poverty, the haunting part where he says: “We try not to eat a lot in one day, even though most of us are really hungry.” Could you look him in the face and say that life won’t be any different for him and children like him under a Labour government? I couldn’t. It has to be.
Nigel Farage, the recently installed leader of Reform UK, has been in Clacton today, where he is hoping to become an MP after seven previous unsuccesful attempts. For the benefit of the cameras he has both had an ice cream by the seafront and been spotted in the pub.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage with an ice cream and a press gaggle. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage sits inside a pub in Clacton-on-Sea. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
As an aside I can’t really knock having a pint on polling day myself as an activity, as it is almost certainly guaranteed to be my first port of call after my shift finishes this afternoon.
Jeremy Corbyn has again appealed on social media for people to come and help his campaign to get out the vote for him as an independent candidate in Islington North, saying “We are on the verge of a huge, historic victory”.
We are on the verge of a huge, historic victory in Islington North.
But we need your help, now, to get us over the line.
Come to Campaign HQ at 89-93 Fonthill Road so we can Get Out The Vote - and win.
Rachel Reeves, who could be on the verge of becoming the first woman to be chancellor of the exchequer, has posted a picture of herself at a polling station today.
Northern Ireland’s political leaders have been among those casting their ballots. A total of 136 candidates are standing in the country’s 18 constituencies.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson and his wife Lindsay voted in east Belfast shortly after 9am while UUP leader Doug Beattie cast his ballot in Portadown minutes earlier.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson and his wife Lindsay, leave after casting their votes in the 2024 general election at Dundonald Elim Church in Belfast. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood cast his vote in his Foyle constituency shortly before 11am, while Alliance leader Naomi Long and her husband Michael voted in east Belfast a short time later.
Long and Robinson are contesting the same East Belfast constituency. Defeat for Robinson would cast doubt on his fledgling leadership of the DUP, while a loss for Long would raise questions on whether the Alliance has hit a high-water mark of support.
Alliance leader Naomi Long, with her husband Michael and their dog Daisy at St Colmcille's Church in east Belfast. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA
Long indulged in a doggy-pun in her social media message.
As Daisy says, vote for those leading paws-itive change 🐶
It is not a UK election day without numerous pictures of dogs at polling stations. So here are a few more from Guardian readers …
Freckles and Bugsy going out on voting day. Photograph: Guardian Community
Emma Towers, who voted in the Southgate and Wood Green constituency, was joined by Freckles and Bugsy, who were bribed with treats to sit for this photo.
Blossom the cockapoo. Photograph: Guardian Community
Philip Mountford, accompanied by Blossom the cockapoo, did a proxy vote for his daughter Hope, who is travelling around South East Asia and is now in Australia.
He said queues had already formed before 7am at the Bishops Cleeve Tithe Barn polling station in the Tewkesbury constituency.
Reto and his son, Bruno. Photograph: Guardian Community
Andrew Cleland, Cambridge was up early to vote with his Siberian Huskies, Reto and his son, Bruno. “Despite almost four years’ age difference, this is both of their first general elections. They feel ‘cakeism’ is an ideology worthy of further research.”
Gerry McLean’s dog, Camilla. Photograph: Guardian Community
And one more from Gerry McLean, Camden Square, London. “It was as busy as I’ve ever seen a polling station, but it was very efficiently run,” he says. “I thought you might be short of pictures of dogs, so here is Camilla outside the London Irish Centre.”
You can tell us what is happening where you are on polling day – and send a picture of your dog too – details of how to contact the team can be found here. We will also accept photos of more exotic animals out voting.
An interesting polling day ding dong going on below the line at The Times this morning. There is disgruntlement among readers, who are less than happy that comments on its election leader – which grumpily sat on the fence and failed to endorse any party – have been switched off.
The Murdoch-owned Times stopped short of endorsing Labour when it finally published its final editorial before the election at 8.30pm last night – some hour’s after Starmer won the support of its stablemate the Sun – instead providing its readers with the resounding message of “Don’t know, really”.
— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) July 3, 2024
After attesting that the Tories were dealt a bad hand, it adds that there were “many unforced errors” and acknowledges that “after 14 years in power there is much baggage.” It describes Starmer as “a sensible man, flexible and pragmatic, a patriot committed to his country’s defence” but says there are “warning signs” about a Labour government including “a disdain for aspiration” shown in its decision to close a loophole that exempts private schools from VAT and “Labour’s attitude to Trans rights”.
After some umming and ahhing it decides: “This newspaper wants the next government to succeed, and it will not be ungenerous in praise if that is the case. But Labour has yet to earn the trust of the British people. It has been sparing with the truth about what it will do in office and cannot expect an endorsement.”
Some of its readers were not best pleased. Initial comments under the leader included criticism of its editor Tony Gallagher, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Sun (with a little stint as deputy editor of the Mail in between). “Gallgher has penned a very long resignation letter,” wrote one reader. “Once the election is over would The Times consider getting a proper Editor back in?,” asked another.
The most striking thing about this begrudging, mealy-mouthed Times editorial is the reader comments below it.
There is widespread scorn at the way the current editor Tony Gallagher (ex-Sun, Mail, Telegraph) has badly misjudged mood and lurched Times to the right pic.twitter.com/wjqyVWQWlf
Then, the comments were inexplicably switched off. Wily readers, determined to have their say, instead took to the comments section of the paper’s second leader, which carried the headline “We the People”, and argued that politicians needed to reconnect with the people they are paid to represent.
“And we, the readers of the Times, petition the editor to reconnect with the readership of this paper and its once vigorous independent-minded ethos,” wrote one reader. “So the Thunderer deems it necessary to switch off comments on its non-endorsement leader, after a stream of adverse comments. A leader, in which it fears for the freedom of the media. Hypocrites!,” added another.
Reader John Ness also reflected on the Times’ nickname of the Thunderer, established – according to the paper – in 1830.
“The irony is painful,” he wrote. “The Times election leader dithers and mumbles and then bravely decides to sit on the fence and then acts decisively to ban comments so that readers cannot point it out. It is election day but it is the date that the Thunderer became the Whimperer.”
The Justice4Grenfell organisation has staged a protest today near to a polling station in the vicinity of Grenfell Tower, the scene of the fire which killed 72 people just days after the 2017 general election.
Since then there has been a further general election, and both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have followed Theresa May as prime minister, but seven years later over 150,000 homes still have flammable cladding, Grenfell inquiry recommendations remain unimplemented, and no prosecutions have been made.
Organisers have placed 72 “Caution, Slippery Politicians” signs within view of the tower.
The Grenfell Tower protest has placed "Caution. Slippery politicians" signs near a polling station within sight of the tower where 72 people were killed in 2017. Photograph: Jeff Moore
In a statement, the organisation said the protest was “to remind everyone to scrutinise politicians’ pledges, particular those regarding housing safety or the treatment of renters and leaseholders, and urge them to ensure they chose a candidate who will serve the public interest.”
In what must be one of the most unusual – and smallest – polling stations in the country, in the remote village of Winwick in Northamptonshire people will be casting their vote in the hallway of someone’s house.
But even though the ballot box is literally under her own staircase, 80-year-old June Thomas said she always casts her ballot by postal vote. She has already walked the 300 yards to the village post box to send her vote in.
She told the BBC: “I don’t think I’ve ever voted in my house – even though it’s the polling station. I can see why people might laugh.”
Her home, the Old School House which was the village school until 1947, has been the polling station for the area since 1990, and is one of only a few remaining private residences still used as polling stations across the country.
Thomas said she started voting by post as she previously worked as a polling station clerk elsewhere and didn’t have time to cast her vote in person – and has remained doing so ever since.
“I know it sounds funny but I’ve just kept using my postal vote and voting by post,” she said.
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