Tory glory – five more years
PRIME MINISTER David Cameron won an emphatic election victory in Britain, overturning predictions that the vote would be the closest in decades to sweep into office for another five years, with his Labour opponents in tatters.
The sterling currency soared on a result that reversed expectations of an indecisive result that could have left Cameron jockeying for power with his Labour rival, Ed Miliband. Instead, Cameron was due to meet the Queen before noon (local time) to accept a swift mandate to form a government.
However, despite the unexpectedly decisive result, more uncertainty looms over whether Britain will stay in the European Union, and even hold together as a country.
Scottish nationalists swept aside Labour, meaning that Scotland, which voted just a year ago to stay in the United Kingdom, will send just three representatives of major British parties to parliament and be all but shut out of the cabinet. That could revive calls for it to leave Britain.
Cameron’s victory also means Britain will face a vote that he has promised on continued membership in the EU. He says he wants to stay in the bloc, but only if he secures changes to its rules in talks that have not yet begun.
Cameron returned, smiling, to Downing Street early yesterday (local time). With fewer than 20 seats yet to be declared, the only big question remaining was whether his Conservatives would win an overall majority to govern alone, or perhaps invite small par- ties to join them in government.
The BBC forecast an overall majority for the Conservatives of 328 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, a result beyond the party’s most optimistic forecasts, and their first majority since 1992. That would mean Cameron no longer needs the Liberal Democrats, with which he has governed since 2010. The party was crushed, perhaps reduced to single digits after winning 57 seats in 2010.
Among the stunning results, Ed Balls, in line to be finance minister if Labour had won, lost his seat.
Cameron sounded a conciliatory note, especially towards Scotland, likely to be his first immediate headache.
‘‘Above all I want to bring our country together, our United Kingdom together, not least by implementing as fast as we can the devolution that we promised,’’ Cameron said.
‘‘I want my party – and, I hope, a government I would like to lead – to reclaim a mantle we should never have lost, the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom.’’
Sterling gained more than
rightly
2 cents against the dollar to rise above $1.55 for the first time since late February, and looked on track to enjoy its biggest one-day gain against the euro since January 2009.
With almost all of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats counted, the Scottish National Party (SNP) had won 56 of them, up from just six five years ago, all but obliterating Labour in one of its historic strongholds.
‘‘We’re seeing an electoral tsunami on a gigantic scale,’’ said Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader, now elected to represent it in parliament in London.
In a body blow to Labour, Douglas Alexander, the party’s campaign chief and foreign policy spokesman, lost his seat to a 20-year-old Scottish nationalist student. Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy was also toppled.
Labour’s Miliband is widely expected to resign in the wake of his defeat.
A North London Socialist and self-described ‘‘geek’’ who never quite connected with workingclass voters, he ran a campaign that was widely seen as better than expected, but was always far behind Cameron in polls that asked voters who they saw as a more credible leader.
‘‘This has clearly been a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party,’’ he told supporters after retaining his own parliamentary seat in Doncaster, northern England.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is also expected to resign, after seeing the party humiliated as a response to his decision to join the Conservatives in government five years ago and abandon high profile election pledges.