VOTERS went to the polls today in what has been one of Britain’s most crucial, yet bitter and divisive elections in modern history.
It’s been six weeks since MPs agreed to ignore the Fixed Term Parliament Act and go to the country for the first winter election since 1923.
Brexit and independence have dominated the campaign. Early reports suggest turnout had been high.
There had been fears that dreich midwinter weather and a campaign that has, at times, been exhausting and grim would deter voters.
On Wednesday, Glasgow City Council warned that they had received 5000 fewer postal voters than in the 2017 election.
Polling stations however seemed busy. There were even reports of queues.
The party leaders were also out in force.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cast her vote early on. The SNP leader was joined by her partner Peter Murrell, as well as the party’s Glasgow East candidate David Linden, at Broomhouse Community Hall in Uddingston.
“Just voted – very proudly – for the exceptional @DavidLinden,” she tweeted.
Linden tweeted: “First polling station visit of the day with @NicolaSturgeon. Confident I’ve got her vote in the bag”.
Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw cast his vote in Clarkston, while Scottish Greens co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater were at polling stations in Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively.
Richard Leonard cast his vote in Paisley. While the LibDem leader Jo Swinson and her husband, Duncan Hames, cast their votes at a primary school in Bearsden in her constituency of East Dunbartonshire.
Despite his seat being relatively marginal, Boris Johnson was the first sitting Prime Minister in many years not to vote for himself.
Rather than use his address in the constituency, he used his vote in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency.
He arrived at a polling station in Methodist Central Hall around 8am accompanied by his dog, Dilyn.
The Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was greeted by supporters in his Islington North constituency.
One lone protester, dressed as Elmo from Sesame Street, was huckled by security guards as she tried to get to the Labour leader.
Corbyn intervened to ask: “Hello guys, can we stop the arguing please?”
She held up a sign with the name Bobby Smith, thought to be a reference to a Fathers 4 Justice activist who caused a security breach at Buckingham Palace in 2016 after using a ladder to scale the building and climb onto the roof.
Her sign also said “Give Me Back Elmo” and “Stop Emotional Child Abuse Vote Elmo”.
The woman was spoken to by police before she was allowed to leave.
In Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, wore a Union Jack scarf to cast her vote for a rival Unionist in her home seat of Fermanagh and South Tyrone in a bid to oust Sinn Féin.
In North Belfast, her colleague Nigel Dodds, the leader of the DUP at Westminster, faced a threat from Sinn Féin’s John Finucane, after the Social Democratic and Labour Party withdrew to help his campaign.
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