CAMERON ‘HEADING BACK TO NUMBER 10’
Exit poll puts Tories on course for over 300 seats Red Ed faces disaster with ‘worst result for 30 years’ SNP set for massive gains as Lib Dem vote collapses
DAVID Cameron today appeared to be heading back to No 10 after ‘shy Tories’ delivered an extraordinary late surge to the Conservatives. The Tories were expected to pick up 316 seats, according to exit polls, while the SNP was on course for a landslide victory north of the Border.
Labour leader Ed Miliband’s career – and that of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – appeared to have been brought to a crashing end as both of their parties were smashed.
Labour was on course for its worst result since Neil Kinnock’s defeat in 1987, with a forecast of 239 seats.
That includes a wipeout in Scotland, which would see both Scottish l eader Jim Murphy and shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander out of a job. If exit polls are correct, the Lib Dems f ace near- wipeout across the UK and will be left with only ten seats.
The poll predicts an earthquake in Scotland, with the SNP winning all but one seat – the Lib Dem stronghold of Orkney and Shetland. That would
make Nicola Sturgeon the leader of what is easily the third largest party in Westminster, putting the 300-year-old Union between England and Scotland in fresh peril.
Some Tory ministers believe the Prime Minister should ‘call her bluff’ and offer the SNP the ‘full fiscal autonomy’ it says it wants for Scotland, which could create a financial black hole amid plunging oil revenues.
Nationalist insiders were swift to talk down such an unprecedented result.
Miss Sturgeon wrote on Twitter: ‘I’d treat the exit poll with HUGE caution. I’m hoping for a good night but I think 58 seats is unlikely.’
An exit poll from YouGov produced a lower seat projection for the SNP of 48 seats.
Conservative chief whip Michael Gove said: ‘The Conservatives have clearly won this election – Labour have clearly lost.’
The exit poll figures would leave the Tories ten seats short of a majority and needing the backing of the rump of the Lib Dems – or Northern Ireland’s DUP – to command a Commons majority.
Turnout was on course to be the highest since Labour’s landslide in 1997, when it hit 71.3 per cent.
All opinion polls had pointed to the second hung Parliament in succession and a far closer result.
Tory strategists had said the party needed to end up with at least 85 seats for Mr Cameron to be able to seek to form another government, with the support of the Liberal Democrats and possibly Northern Ireland’s DUP.
A YouGov projection painted a less positive picture for the Tories, suggesting they would end up on 84 seats and Labour on 63.
That would be likely to see Mr Cameron in No 10 but facing a more difficult job to assemble a viable coalition.
The most tumultuous results could be in Scotland, where the SNP was on course to seize most of the 41 seats Labour won in 010. The SNP appeared on the brink of holding the balance of power, making Miss Sturgeon Westminster’s ‘king-maker’.
She has vowed never to back Mr Cameron and to seek to join forces with Labour to ‘lock the Tories out’.
Lib Dem HQ appeared confident that Nick Clegg, who has faced a tough challenge from Labour in his Sheffield Hallam seat, would cling on, thanks largely to tactical votes from Conservatives.
Ukip was confident of victory in only two seats – Clacton and Thurrock. Tory HQ said the result in Thanet South, where Nigel Farage was attempting to become an MP, was ‘too close to call’.
Whitehall officials have assembled a team to oversee expected fresh coalition negotiations between the parties.
Constitutional rules mean Mr Cameron remains Prime Minister in a hung Parliament and has the right to seek to put forward a Queen’s Speech, the traditional legislative programme of a government.