Election latest: George Osborne says he ‘can’t think of a worse manifesto’ than Theresa May's

'The manifesto, which was drafted by her and about two other people, was a total disaster'

George Osborne has said the election would be “completely catastrophic” for Theresa May’s Conservatives if exit polls suggesting the UK is heading for a hung parliament are correct.

The former Chancellor, who left Parliament the day after the Prime Minister called a snap election to focus on his new job as editor of the Evening Standard, called Ms May’s manifesto “a total disaster”.

“The manifesto, which was drafted by her and about two other people, was a total disaster and must go down now as one of the worst in history by a governing party,” he told ITV News.

“I say one of the worst; I actually can’t think of a worse one.”

The shock exit poll suggests Theresa May, who triggered the election with a huge majority in the polls over her main opponent Jeremy Corbyn, will lose her overall majority and only take 314 seats in total.

That would be a loss of 17 seats, with with Labour on 266, a gain of 34. It also put the SNP on 34, the Lib Dems on 14, Plaid Cymru on three and the Greens on one.

“This is from a position of Government. They called an election, they said it was about Brexit, but everybody knew it was about trying to grab a bigger majority,” added Mr Osborne.

“It is early days, it's a poll, if the poll is anything like accurate this is completely catastrophic for the Conservatives and for Theresa May,” he said, smiling, when the poll results were announced.

“It's difficult to see, if these numbers are right, how they would put together the coalition to remain in office. But equally it's quite difficult to see how Labour could put together a coalition. It's on a real knife-edge.”

The Conservative manifesto sparked a backlash with one of its key policies, the so-called “dementia tax”, which led to an extraordinary U-turn from the Prime Minister.

Ms May said the Conservatives would pledge to introduce a cap on lifetime care costs, following widespread protests that more families would be forced to sell the homes of pensioners paying for their care.

As of 2.30pm, overall turnout was at 67 per cent, up two per cent from 2015. A large number of people casting their vote could be good news for Labour, whose election day hopes have historically hinged on a high turnout.