Ed Miliband will be forced to resign within hours, a source in Labour HQ has admitted as Labour faces up to a very bad night.

“Ed has to resign tomorrow. Everyone here accepts that,” the Labour source told the New Statesman.

Minutes later Labour's shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander became the first heavy weight figure to lose his seat - falling to 20-year-old SNP candidate Mhairi Black, adding to Labour's failure to win its key target seat of Nuneaton and losing support to the Tories in seats it managed to cling on to.

It is also turning into a very bad night for the Liberal Democrats, with Nick Clegg admitting it is a “bad night” as the party faces up to the prospect of losing all but 10 of its MPs.

Liberal Democrat Cabinet ministers Danny Alexander, Ed Davey and Vince Cable are all in danger of losing their seats.

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Labour was looking to win at least 40 seats from the Tories, but in the party experienced a big blow when it not only failed to win the key target seat of Nuneaton but the Tory incumbent managed to increase his lead.

Shortly afterwards it lost Kilmarnock to the SNP, with Scottish nationalist Alan Brown booting out incumbent MP Cathie Jamieson with almost twice the number of votes.

Labour MP John Mann has already turned on Mr Miliband:

Even in Labour strongholds such as North Wales, the party fell back, winning Wrexham with a significantly reduced majority of just 1,831 seats – losing support to the Tories.