Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries accused Alastair Campbell of sexism during election coverage last night after he made a comment about her loyalty to Boris Johnson.
Appearing on Channel 4 as part of the broadcaster’s election programme, hosted by Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Ms Dorries confronted the former Labour spokesman just minutes after polls closed at 10pm.
The former culture secretary and staunch Boris Johnson supporter said the projected results were a “disaster” for the party, after an exit poll predicted the party would win just 131 seats.
Pressed on the meteoric rise of Reform, which is projected to win 13 seats, Ms Dorriess pointed out that the far-right party was polling in single digits while Mr Johnson was prime minister.
Then Mr Campbell interrupted her and said: “You really need to get over Boris.”
Former Conservative Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has accused Alastair Campbell of sexism
Former Labour spokesman Mr Campbell appeared on Channel 4’s election night coverage alongside Ms Dorries.
Ms Dorries replied: “I think that’s quite a sexist comment.”
Mr Campbell replied: “It really isn’t.”
The pair continued to trade blows throughout the show and the hosts had to intervene at times.
Just minutes later, another clash broke out, this time between Harriet Harman of the Labour Party and Kwasi Kwarteng of the Conservative Party.
Ms Harman accused Mr Kwarteng of being “patronising” in his response to her.
Ms Dorries intervened, saying: ‘It seems to be up to me and Harriet to hold men to account in this scenario.
This came after the exit poll predicted Labour would have a total of 410 seats after the election, a majority of 170.
The Conservatives are expected to get 131, the Liberal Democrats 61, the Reform Party 13 and the SNP 10.
The SNP vote is projected to be decimated, having won 48 seats in the 2019 election, while Plaid Cymru in Wales is projected to gain four seats.
The Greens are also expected to win a second seat in Bristol after a closely fought campaign.
The Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010, will be relegated to the opposition benches in the House of Commons, with exit polls suggesting their number will fall to 131 seats, a loss of about 241 MPs.
This would be the lowest number of deputies on record.
The confrontation on the show hosted by Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murthy (both pictured) occurred just minutes after polls closed.
Harriet Harman (left) later accused Kwasi Kwarteng (centre) of being patronising.
Social media users were quick to react to the online clash between the political rivals.
In 2019, under the leadership of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the party won 365 seats, with a majority of 80.
That figure could now be dwarfed by the expected result for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party later in the evening, which is projected to win power with a total of 410 seats according to the poll.
Rishi Sunak has tried to appear optimistic, limiting himself on Wednesday – the last day of campaigning – to saying that he was an “underdog” who was fighting until the “final whistle”.
But the exit poll, the final test of public opinion on vote-counting night, has laid bare the scale of the devastation facing the Tories.
At risk of losing their seats tonight are several senior cabinet ministers, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said the forecast was “encouraging” but that several seats were “on a knife edge”.
“If you look at where we were in 2019, just to get a majority of one we would have had to make a bigger change than Tony Blair did in 1997,” he told the BBC.
‘We know that a number of seats were up for grabs based on our own data, but I also know that all of our campaigners and candidates have gone to the polls taking nothing for granted and talking to voters about what matters to them.’
A Conservative source said: “It is clear from these results that we will have lost some very good and hard-working candidates.”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party was “on course to achieve our best results in a century, thanks to our positive campaign with health and healthcare at its heart”.
Elsewhere, the race to be the first seat of the night to declare was won by Houghton and Sunderland South, which was again won by Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.
Phillipson polled 18,847 votes (47 per cent) ahead of Reform UK (11,668), more than double the Conservatives (5,514), the Liberal Democrats (2,290) and the Green Party (1,723). Turnout was 51.2 per cent.
