“I hope you enjoy a celebration tonight,” Johnson wrote in an email to party members, which was seen by Reuters. “You powered this campaign. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Exit polls on Thursday evening showed the Tories winning 368 seats, more than enough to command a parliamentary majority, with Labour down to 191 seats in a crushing defeat to Jeremy Corbyn.

Official election results will be known at some point during the night, but even the leading Labour luminaries have conceded that exit polls have been generally correct. 

Johnson called a general election after a number of Conservative members rebelled and voted with a Labour proposal to tie his hands in negotiating Brexit from the European Union, depriving him of a majority in Parliament.

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