By Stephen Fisher.

At the time of writing it looks like the Conservatives will win 319 seats, short of the 326 seats they needed to win an overall majority. (The following numbers are provisional.)

Most likely they will come to some agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party in order to remain in government.

Given that Sinn Fein won 7 seats that they will not take, there are effectively 643 MPs returning to the House of Commons.  The Conservatives 319 + 10 DUP seats constitutes an effective majority of 15.

This is intriguingly similar to the actual majority of 12 that David Cameron won in 2015.

By comparison with a tally of 331 seats in 2015, the Conservatives lost 27 seats to Labour and 5 to the Liberal Democrats.

29 of those 32 Conservative losses were in England.

They were partly compensated for by gains of 6 seats from Labour, 1 from the Liberal Democrats, 1 from UKIP in England.  As a result the Tories suffered a net loss of 21 seats in England.

They lost a further 3 seats in Wales, making a net loss of 24 seats in England and Wales.

Were that the end of the story then the Conservatives would have ended up with just 310 seats. That would not have been enough to remain in government.

Only thanks to 12 gains from Scottish National Party are the Tories able to remain in government.

The Conservatives in England and Wales owe their continuing position in government to the popularity and success of Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Conservatives.

Numbers will be updated when all results are in.