The Crawley count went very slowly. The verification took forever and it was after 2am before the proper count even started.

We ended up with a result too close to call. The first count showed Labour winning by 78 votes so there was obviously a recount. This uncovered a mixed bundle allocated to Labour and the result was therefore a Labour majority of just 32 votes.

At about 4:30am the returning officer announced that he was suspending the second recount until noon… so we will all be back at the leisure centre at 12.

Somehow I can’t see Laura and Henry getting much sleep.

It was good to see that we held on to all our seats in Brighton & Hove (congratulations by the way to the Brighton & Hove Labour party) so now we are holding our breath to make sure we get a full house of results in this part of Sussex.

If we do win, as I hope we will, it just goes to show how valuable all the leafletting and knocking up today was. We must have had at least 30 people out today, and if every person only generated one extra vote then that was enough to do the job. I know that I called on a few Labour supporters who said they could not vote as they had not received their polling card. I told them that they did not need it and just had to go to the polling station and give their name and address. They said they would do that. Assuming all the other party workers had similar experiences, we can all feel that we contributed.