IT is a Bank Holiday on Monday so there is no excuse not to stay up half the night to see and hear the European election results pour in.
What do you mean, you’d rather sleep? ITV seems to have decided the same thing, leaving the field clear to the BBC. At 10pm on Sunday, the minute the polls close, ITV will have its nightly news bulletin then it is straight on to Heathrow: Britain’s Busiest Airport followed by a Vince Vaughn comedy, Couples Retreat.
On the BBC, however, it is going to be a busy night for anchor Huw Edwards, who will be joined by Prof Sir John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde, political editor Laura Kuenssberg and Europe editor Katya Adler.
On radio the main choices are Stephen Nolan on 5 Live, and on BBC Radio 4, it will be Chris Mason and Adam Fleming of Brexitcast fame.
In Scotland, the new BBC Scotland channel welcomes its first election night results show. Hosted by Nine anchors Rebecca Curran and Martin Geissler, it will run from 10pm to midnight.
Be it two hours or eight hours, there is going to be a lot of time to fill with not very much going on initially. The whole of the UK will be electing 73 MEPs – six in Scotland – compared to 650 MPs at the last General Election.
At least the results here will be known, the polls having closed in the UK last Thursday. Citizens in other EU countries will carry on voting up till 10pm tomorrow, hence the wait for results.
It would not be a BBC election special without a headline-grabbing Curtice exit poll, so expect that and lots of analysis about how the results might translate to a General Election. The other major focus of the night will be the rise or fall in support for populist parties across Europe. In London and in charge of the giant screen will be Reeta Chakrabarti, comfortably taking over from Jeremy Vine and Peter Snow as arm-waver in chief.
If that still isn’t enough, there will be the usual through the night coverage on Sky News. See you on the other side.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here