General Election 2024: Labour holds Hackney as Diane Abbott and Meg Hillier celebrate victory

Meg Hillier (left) and Diane Abbott (right) at this morning’s count. Photograph: Maya Sall

The General Election was a night of change across the country, but Hackney residents woke up this morning to business as usual after Labour candidates Diane Abbott and Meg Hillier retained their seats.

The borough’s count took place at the Service Centre just behind the Town Hall on Mare Street, with the results arriving in the early hours of the morning.

Hillier was the first to find out about her victory in the Hackney South and Shoreditch seat that she has held since 2005.

It was a comfortable win, with Hillier achieving a 14,737-vote majority.

In total, 24,724 ballots were cast for the Labour incumbent, with the Green Party’s Laura-Louise Fairley finishing second with just shy of 10,000 votes.

In her acceptance speech, Hillier said: “Now we have the opportunity to really deliver for the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch, with a Labour government, a Labour council, a Labour Mayor of London.”

She said the new government would help reduce NHS wait times, provide the housing that Hackney needs, and “tackle poverty in a constituency and borough were one in two children live in poverty”.

Diane Abbott’s triumph in Hackney North and Stoke Newington was announced shortly afterwards.

Abbott also won handsomely, taking 24,355 votes to continue representing the constituency that she has held since 1987.

She achieved a similar majority to her Hackney South counterpart, with the runner-up, Antoinette Fernandez of the Green Party, totting up 9,275 votes.

Speaking after the results were announced, Abbott slammed the scapegoating of migrants, saying: “I became an MP to give support to people who don’t have support, to speak up on issues that other people are ignoring, and to be a voice for the voiceless.

“I will never stand by and see anybody from whatever party, whoever they are, denigrate and blame migrants for the ills of this society.

“We are here on the morning of a historic Labour victory. This incoming Labour government has the opportunity to be truly transformative.”

Abbott will be mother of the House in the new parliament – a title given to the longest-serving female MP.

Despite the comfortable majorities for Labour, both Abbott and Hillier suffered a fall in their share of the vote compared to the previous General Election.

In Abbott’s Hackney North constituency, Labour is down 10.3 per cent, with the Greens up a by a significant margin of 14.6 per cent.

In Hackney South, Labour’s vote share fell even further, by 14.1 per cent, with the Greens  up a whopping 17.5 per cent.

The results mean that it is the first time that the Greens are Hackney’s second biggest party in terms of the parliamentary vote share – matching a feat that they have long achieved in the borough’s local elections.

Here are the full results in order of votes received, with vote share in brackets:

Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Diane Abbott, Labour Party, 24,355 (59.5 per cent)

Antoinette Fernandez, Green Party, 9,275 (22.6 per cent)

David Benzion Landau, Conservative Party, 3,457 (8.4 per cent)

Rebecca Jones, Liberal Democrats, 1,562 (3.8 per cent)

Deborah Cairns, Reform UK, 1,283 (3.1 per cent)

Ryan Ahmad, Independent, 621 (1.5 per cent)

Knigel Knapp, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party, 224 (0.5 per cent)

Kombat Diva, Independent, 182 (0.4 per cent)

Hackney South and Shoreditch

Meg Hillier, Labour Party, 24,724 (59.3 per cent)

Laura-Louise Fairley, Green Party, 9,987 (23.9 per cent)

Joanna Kate Reeves, Conservative Party, 2,076 (5.0 per cent)

Theo Roos, Liberal Democrats, 1,996 (4.8 per cent)

Anil Bhatti, Reform UK, 1,601 (3.8 per cent)

Shahed Hussain, Workers Party, 1,007 (2.4 per cent)

Carol Susan Small, 310 (0.7 per cent)