Fife on course to Remain with the in crowd

With the counters taking as well earned break, campaigners for In are quietly confident they have seen enough to suggest the regional vote will go their way.

They won’t call it just yet - we could be two hours from a declaration at the Michael Woods Sports Centre in Glenrothes - but a sample of the boxes has given them enough of an overview.

The table set aside for Leave campaigners to use as a base has remained unoccupied all night.

There are some variations across the Kingdom, but the mix of papers makes it hard to paint a definitive picture yet - that may come in the morning.

So far they have sampled boxes from towns as diverse as Kennoway and Dalgety Bay, and got a flavour of the north-east Fife vote.

Willie Campbell, part of the Remain campaign, said it was ‘‘looking positive.’’

Glenrothes councillor, Altany Craik, admitted it was sa very different kind of campaign from an election, with less door knocking and more leafleting.

‘‘There’s no clear picture yet - no real sense of scale from the ballot boxes we’ve seen, but turnout is good. People have also gone to the voting booth and really thought about what their vote means.’’

Peter Grant, MP for Glenrothes, also part of the Remain campaign, said it had been a difficult campaign coming on the back of the Scottish Government elections and local by-elections.

‘‘Our teams of volunteers were run into the ground for the Scottish elections,’’ he said. ‘‘They’d taken time off, used up flexi time and put everything they had into that, so to ask them to do it all again just weeks later is hard.’’

The view of the Leave camoaign is hard to assess.

There is just one supporter in the hall, and the table set up for its agents to number crunmch remains empty.

Requests for an interview resulted in a phone number to contact for the east of Scotland co-ordinator who is currently in Edinburgh. It seems a bit rude to so early in the morning ...

>> Stage two of the verification process is now getting underway after the counters took a short break. Estimates for a result in Fife now suggesting possibly 2.30 a.m. - although 3.00 a.m. is the official target

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>> There will be regular updates live from the Fife count on our website, and on Twitter yuou can follow @fifefreepressed for more information from the venue through the night until the result is declared. Use the hashtags #EURef and #EUrefFife