LAST UPDATE | 5 Jul 2024

RISE AND SHINE,

here’s everything you need to know to start your day off informed.

UK General Election

1. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party have won a massive landslide in the Westminster elections, inflicting the worst defeat that the Conservative Party have suffered in over a century.

Exit polls released last night put Labour on course to win 410 seats, over three times as many as the Conservatives, with Starmer saying this morning that the UK is waking up to “the sunlight of hope”.

Sinn Féin

2. Sinn Féin have become the largest Northern Irish party in Westminster, maintaining all of their seven seats. This completes a hat-trick, after they also became the largest party in Stormont and northern local assemblies.

The party took a landslide in the notoriously tight seat of Fermanagh-South Tyrone, with Pat Cullen, the former general secretary and chief executive of the UK’s Royal College of Nursing, taking the seat by over 4,600 votes.

North Antrim

3. In a shock result, the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr. has lost his seat in North Antrim to the Reform-backed Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) candidate Jim McAllister. While Reform backed McAllister, Paisley Jr. was personally backed by Reform’s leader Nigel Farage.

It is the first time in over 50 years that the seat will not be held by an Ian Paisley, with his father, Ian Paisley, wining the seat there in 1970.

Cabinet Collapse

4. A record number of UK cabinet ministers, ten so far, have lost their seats in the latest general election.

Defence Secretary Grant Schapps, and Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt are among those to go. A number of other high-profile Tory ex-ministers, including former Commons leader Jacob Reese-Mogg and former Prime Minister Liz Truss have also been defeated.

Farage

5. Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party, has been elected as the MP for Clacton. This is his eigth attempt at election to Westminster.

Farage, who served as an MEP for South-East England from 1999 to 2000, was one of the UK’s most ardent Brexiteers, and led the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2016.

Corbyn

6. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as the Independent MP for Islington North with 49% of the vote. His Labour Party opponent Praful Nargund came in second place with 34%.

Asked whether Starmer will make a good Prime Minister, Corbyn said: “Well, see what happens”, adding that he will be there in Westminster to “hold government to account”.

Cannabis seizure

7. One man has been arrested after the seizure of canabis with an approximate value of €1.6 million.

Gardaí carried out a search in Blanchardstown, Dublin, on Thursday night, and made the seizure of over 80kg of drugs. Investigations are ongoing.

FAI

8. Gardaí have said that at least one investigation is underway, after the FAI revealed that a number of historical abuse allegations from the 1990s have been made by female players.

FAI President Paul Cooke, in an email to the General Assembly, said that “all safeguarding concerns” that are brought to the FAI’s attention are dealt with as “a matter of priority”.

Waterford

9. A verdict is due today in the case of a Garda Sergeant accused of assaulting a criminal suspect in custody, and pressuring a junior colleague to make a “false” entry on the station’s custody register two years ago.

Sgt William Doyle has pleaded not guilty to a section 2 assault charge against the man in custody, under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, and another charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice by requesting no record be taken.