In an election, the results of which defied all expectations and predictions, the Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, was swept back to power on Friday — this time with a convincing majority — to govern the United Kingdom for another five years.
For weeks prior to the elections, pollsters had predicted a hung parliament leading to a coalition government, with smaller parties having a dominant say in government. The first inkling of how entirely wrong they were came with the exit polls on Thursday evening showing a big swing towards the Conservative Party in England and the Scottish National Party in Scotland, with both Labour and the Liberal Democrats suffering damaging losses. The results proved this to be entirely correct.
The Conservative Party won with 331 seats, comfortably crossing the 326 mid-way mark in the 650-seat House of Commons. A distant second, the Labour Party won 232 seats, a loss of 26 seats. Its leader Ed Miliband has stepped down.
“We will make Britain greater,” David Cameron vowed after the results were announced.
| Seats | Vote Share | |
| 331 | 36.9% | |
| 232 | 30.4% | |
| 56 | 4.7% | |
| 8 | 7.9% | |
| 1 | 12.6% | |
| 8 | 0.6% |
SNP sweeps Scotland
The Scottish National Party put up a spectacular performance, winning 56 of the 59 Scottish parliamentary seats, and putting an end to the domination of the Labour Party, which suffered heavy losses to the SNP in the region.
Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, who led his party to a poor finish, winning only eight seats, down from 57 in 2010, has stepped down.
The leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage also resigned following his defeat in Thanet South, a symbolic blow for the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic party that got just one seat. The Democratic Unionist Party of Ireland won eight.
The Labour party must now choose a new leader. Ed Miliband, who fought a spirited campaign on the promise of reversing the anti-austerity policies of previous coalition government, in his resignation message took “full responsibility” for the defeat of his party.
Stalwarts trounced
The elections saw the defeat of several senior leaders. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, Scotland’s Labour party head Jim Murphy and the party’s campaign head Douglas Alexander, all lost their seats, the latter to Mhairi Black, a 20-year-old SNP candidate.
The senior Lib Dem leader and former Business Secretary Vince Cable lost his Twickenham seat, which he has held since 1987. So too former Energy Secretary Ed Davey who lost to the Conservatives in Kingston and Surbiton.
