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Polling day sees voters queuing around the block

LONG queues were seen outside polling stations today as a high turnout across the country led to people waiting in the damp and cold to cast their votes.

Wandsworth council, which covers the Labour-held marginal of Battersea, the Tory-held marginal of Putney and safe Labour seat Tooting, said “unprecedented numbers” of people were voting in the third general election in five years before heading to work.

Labour supporter Dr Oonagh Murphy posted photos of her polling station in Battersea, where she said there was a 30-minute wait to vote and people were “leaving the queue to come back later.”

Claire Hazelgrove said: “There’s a queue to vote here in very marginal Putney!! I’ve never had to queue before.”

George Kean Proudfoot said: “My run and vote plan slightly scuppered by queues out the door in Camberwell.”

Chris Schofield in the Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency said more than 70 voters were waiting outside his polling station — some of whom he said gave up and left, “presumably to go to work.”

Mr Schofield said: “I think it’s the election of a lifetime for many of us.”

Waits were also reported in other English cities such as Cambridge — where John Walsh tweeted to say it was the “first time ever” that he had had to queue to vote.

Students lined up at a University of Exeter campus in the Tories’ relatively marginal constituency of Falmouth and Truro.

Around 40 students queued at University of Kent in the Labour-held marginal of Canterbury.

Meanwhile, the oldest woman in Wales, 108-year-old Amy Hawkins, battled the cold and damp weather to vote in Monmouthshire.

She said: “I voted for Labour because they do more for you. The Conservatives have always been all for the rich, whilst the Labour Party is there for everyone — a law for the rich and a law for the poor.”

A study by independent group the UK Trade Policy Observatory found that Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan would reduce the size of Britain’s economy by almost 2 per cent.

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