Angela Rayner twists knife over Tory 'decline' and dubs exit poll result as 'punishment'

Angela Rayner has said the General Election exit poll result show the Conservative Party is being punished for 14 years of scandals and decline.

The exit poll suggests Labour is on course for 410 seats with the Tories reduced to 131. It will mean a Labour prime minister in No 10 for the first time since 2010 and the Conservatives facing a possible civil war.

Speaking from a rainy Ashton-under-Lyne, Ms Rayner told Sky News the exit poll was encouraging, but she signalled a note of caution, saying the results aren't in yet. She added: "Keir has done a tremendous job in transforming the Labour Party and putting forward a programme for government the country can get behind.

"After 14 years of the chaos and the scandals and the decline that we've seen under the Tories, I think they're getting punished for that. That's pretty clear in the polls as well."

Asked about Labour's 2019 defeat and if the exit poll suggestes a result beyond her wildest expectations, Ms Rayner said: "Well, I just to say thank you to those people that have voted for Labour and, if the exit polls are correct, then it's an incredible honour for them to put their trust in us, especially after the 2019 defeat."

She added: "I want to say to the people of this country that myself and Keir, and the rest of the shadow cabinet, are putting themselves in the service of them.

"We've seen the self service under the Conservatives. We understand the weight on our shoulders and the mandate is, you better deliver for us. And I say to the people of this country, I will always put you first and I will fight really hard everyday to turn things around. We know how difficult it's been for people and we'll work really hard to get people's faith back in politics, and to turn that page on the decline and chaos that we've had."

On whether Labour can hold the party together with so many MPs, Ms Rayner told Sky: "Well, we were very clear when Keir and myself took over that we had to have a high bar four our candidates so we didn't accept that any of them would be paper candidates. We've seen even in this election what happens when candidates fall below the standard that we'd expect from people who want to be MPs and we've taken decisive action since we've Keir's been the leader and I've been deputy."

She added: "We put the country first... and that's what we expect the whole of our party to deliver... I've seen our tremendous calibre of candidates."

The Tories are set to be banished to the opposition benches of the House of Commons, with exit polling suggesting the party will lose some 241 MPs. This would be its lowest number of MPs on record.

In 2019, under then-premier Boris Johnson premiership the party won 365 seats, with majority of 80.

That total is now set to be dwarfed by the result expected for Sir Keir Starmer's Labour by the end of the night, which is predicted to win power with a total of 410 seats according to the exit poll.

At risk of losing their seats this evening are several prominent Cabinet ministers, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.

Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Tories, called the projected election result a "massacre". But she said the word coming out of Conservative central office earlier was that the Tories could be below three figures in terms of seats