Election night: Scotland’s big moments – BBC News

It was a night of high drama and big changes across Scotland.

The SNP’s losses also mean the loss of its status as Westminster’s third biggest party.

And as the Labour landslide swept across Britain, the party regained traditional seats north of the border.

Here a few of the standout moments as the ballots were counted.

Once a traditional Labour stronghold, Glasgow has in recent years elected SNP MPs to Westminster.

Winning Scotland’s biggest city is the centrepiece of Labour’s comeback.

The city’s final result came just after 05:00, to be greeted with ecstatic cheers.

When Labour’s Martin Rhodes was announced as having won Glasgow North, defeated SNP candidate Alison Thewliss could not hide her emotions.

The Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has for some years sat in both Holyrood and Westminster.

He entered the campaign promising not to contest the general election and concentrate on the job of leading his party in the Scottish Parliament.

But then he changed his mind, announcing that he would be standing in the newly redrawn constituency of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East instead of his colleague David Duguid, who was controversially dropped while ill in hospital.

A backlash from his own members led to Mr Ross promising to step down from the leader job and leave Holyrood, should he win on 4 July.

In the event, he lost out to the SNP’s Seamus Logan by just by 942 votes, a result he blamed on Reform’s strong showing in the ballot.

And he was pictured at the count beside an unfortunately placed sign which caught many candidates out on the night.

Celebrating some rare good news for the SNP on the night were the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn and his colleagues Kirsty Blackman.

The two kept Aberdeen yellow, winning their neighbouring constituencies in the city.

But he’s heading back south to a very different House of Commons and a very different SNP group.

Nearly 40 MPs down by Friday morning, they’ll lose status, money and power in the new parliament.

“I am watching on as so many of my colleagues and friends are losing their seats and of course that’s tough to take,” he told BBC Scotland.

And amid all the departures there was at least one notable return.

Former Labour cabinet minister Douglas Alexander took the Lothian East seat with almost half the vote.

The former Scottish secretary was a major figure in the Blair and Brown governments before being memorably defeated in 2015 by the SNP’s Mhairi Black.

He’s already being tipped for a return to the front benches in Sir Keir Starmer’s new government.

And after all that, spare a thought for the voters and candidates in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire.

They won’t know who’s won until Saturday thanks to a statistical issue.

There appears to be a discrepancy between the verified votes and the counted votes which means the returning officer cannot declare a result at this stage.

The seat has seen a close fight between the SNP and the Scottish Liberal Democrats.