Tom McCabe, Karen Gillon, Karen Whitefield and Andy Kerr entered Holyrood in 1999
Four Labour MSPs who had represented Lanarkshire seats since 1999 have lost their seats to the SNP in the election.
Former ministers Andy Kerr and Tom McCabe lost East Kilbride and Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse to the SNP’s Linda Fabiani and Christina McKelvie.
Karen Gillon and Karen Whitefield lost Clydesdale and Airdrie and Shotts to Aileen Campbell and Alex Neil.
The party had better news in Eastwood where it held the Tory target. Leader Iain Gray held his East Lothian seat.
There had been speculation that Mr Gray may lose the seat to the SNP’s David Berry, who cut the Labour majority to 151 votes.
And in Eastwood, Labour’s Ken Macintosh had feared losing the constituency following boundary changes which gave a notional victory to Jackson Carlaw of the Scottish Conservatives.
Labour has retained the Rutherglen constituency with James Kelly re-elected the area’s MSP with 12,489 votes, or 46%. It also held Greenock and Inverclyde and
However, the party failed to take Glasgow Southside, where it had a slim notional majority after boundary changes.
Nicola Sturgeon – who represented Glasgow Govan in the last Holyrood parliament – won the seat with a majority of more than 4,000.
Mr Gray blamed his party’s losses on the “collapse of the Lib Dem votes” and said clearly disgruntled Liberal Democrats were going to the SNP.
Reacting to the loss of former ministers Tom McCabe and Andy Kerr, he said: “It is very disappointing – two very, very good colleagues who will be a great lose to the Scottish Parliament, that is for sure.”
He added: “What we are seeing is complete and utter collapse of the Lib Dem vote and significant loss in the Tory vote and that is coalescing with the SNP.
“We have fought a very hard campaign over six weeks around what I think is the issue that voters believe is most important – jobs and growing the economy.”
A raft of constituencies are expected to declare in the next couple of hours, including the six Edinburgh seats, with Central and Eastern both having slim notional majorities.
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Labour is on course to win an outright majority in the Welsh assembly, says a leading political analyst, as Liberal Democrats suffer a blow with the loss of Montgomeryshire.
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The Liberal Democrats took control of Hull council – a former Labour stronghold – in 2007
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The Liberal Democrat leader of Hull City Council has told a news conference that his party has lost control of the local authority to Labour.
Carl Minns also said he believed he had lost his seat, but this has not yet been confirmed.
He had earlier said he would be “gobsmacked” if Labour did not make significant gains in Hull.
The Lib Dems currently control Hull council, with 32 seats compared with Labour’s 23 seats.
BBC Yorkshire & Lincolnshire political editor Tim Iredale said he understood that of the 12 seats the Lib Dems were defending at this election, Labour had won 10.
Mr Minns said: “It is going to be a bad night. Labour are going to win enough seats for an overall majority.”
Labour’s Hull West and Hessle MP Alan Johnson said: “There is a feeling around here that something seismic is happening in Hull, but let’s see the actual votes declared.
“It is quite extraordinary that Carl Minns said that when not a single vote has been counted.”
His comments came as vote counting continued at councils across East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire.
All seats at North Lincolnshire and East Riding of Yorkshire councils are up for grabs and a third of seats in Hull and North East Lincolnshire.
The Conservatives control East Riding, Labour controls North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire is Lib Dem-led.
The national alternative vote referendum has also taken place, the first nationwide referendum since 1975.
Counting will either take place Thursday night or on Friday with the count for the alternative vote system beginning on Friday afternoon.
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Commodity prices stabilise in Asian trade after big falls in the price of oil and silver a day previously.
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Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray has been re-elected as an MSP with a narrow majority of just 151 votes.
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The first results are expected to be announced from midnight
Counting has begun after polls closed in elections for 279 English councils and elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
The English polls are the biggest test yet for the coalition, with results due in from midnight. Labour hope to make gains from the Tories and Lib Dems.
Counting in the Northern Irish Assembly election begins on Friday morning.
The outcome of the UK-wide referendum on the Westminster voting system is due on Friday evening.
In the most significant test of public opinion since last year’s general election, parties face the voters’ verdict across the UK.
In Scotland, the SNP is hoping to keep power at Holyrood, where it runs a minority administration.Labour is looking to win overall control of the Welsh Assembly, where it currently rules in coalition with Plaid Cymru, but party sources say it may fall short of a majorityThe DUP and Sinn Fein are expected to remain the biggest parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In what has been dubbed “super Thursday”, a parliamentary by-election also took place in Leicester South, following the decision by Labour MP Sir Peter Soulsby to stand down to run for mayor of the city.
More mayoral contests are being held in Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Torbay and Bedford while local authority elections also took place in Northern Ireland.
Almost a year since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was formed, the contests taking place in England are the first chance for most voters to deliver a verdict on its performance.
Sunderland is expected to be the first council to declare at about midnight, with significant results expected from Birmingham at 0130 and Lib Dem held Bristol at 0200.
WHEN RESULTS ARE DUE
2200: Polls close
2330: Early results expected from some English councils
0130-0230: Key council results expected in Birmingham, Bristol, Hull and Sheffield
0230: First Scottish and Welsh constituency results expected
0300: Results due from Liverpool, Manchester and Stockport councils
0600: First results from Scottish and Welsh regional list elections
0730: Counting begins in Leicester South parliamentary by-election
0800: Counting begins in Northern Ireland Assembly elections
1600: Counting begins in AV referendum
LIVE: Election 2011 Vote 2011: How events will unfold
Labour, which ran an anti-spending cuts campaign, will be hoping to make gains on many English councils at the expense of the other two main parties.
It is looking to take control of several large authorities, including Leeds, Bolton, Ipswich and Sheffield.
The council seats up for grabs were last contested in 2007, when Labour lost 642 councillors in one of the party’s worst ever performances.
Support for the Lib Dems is expected to fall, although the party also had a bad time in 2007, with a net loss of 257 councillors, meaning it too is starting from a low base.
The Conservatives, the big winners four years ago, are predicted to lose some of their 9,432 councillors.
Smaller parties are looking to make headway. The Greens are hoping to take control, either on their own or in alliance with other parties, in Brighton and Hove and Norwich while the UK Independence Party is looking to increase its representation.
The result of a UK-wide referendum on whether to end the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections and replace it with the alternative vote (AV) system will not be known until Friday evening – with counting set to begin at 1600 BST.
Polls suggested AV – under which voters rank candidates in order of preference – will be rejected by a sizeable margin, but turnout levels at polling stations are predicted to have been fairly low, making the result more unpredictable.
The Conservatives oppose changing the electoral system, while the Lib Dems are in favour of AV. This has led to some bitter rows between senior coalition colleagues over the past few weeks.
Former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown has accused Prime Minister David Cameron of a “breach of trust” for not disassociating himself from what he said were “vicious” attacks by the No to AV campaign on Deputy PM Nick Clegg.
He told the Guardian that Mr Cameron had “panicked” in the face of pressure from the right of his party and “backtracked” on promises about how the campaign would be conducted.
The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said anger over the issue was rife among the Lib Dems. Although the party was committed to the coalition, he added that if the polls went badly, they would face demands to assert themselves more on key policies.
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