Opponents united in cruel quirk of timing

But it is not just SA-UK bilateral relations that are in jeopardy because a Conservative prime minister has been reelected. The real danger is something Cameron will have to contend with in the near future: the possible British exit from the EU and the vengeful ghost of Scottish nationalism.

This will eat up the bandwidth available for international relations.

The Conservatives took 331 seats and Labour 232. The Lib Dems were decimated, winning just eight of the 57 seats they had held before the poll.

Nigel Farage failed in his bid to become an MP and bemoaned the fact that his UK Independence Party took just one seat under the first-past-the-post system, despite winning four million votes.

But the success of Farage’s right-wing anti-immigration campaign frightened the other parties, particularly the Tories. As a result, during the campaign Cameron promised he would renegotiate terms with the EU.

He also offered voters the final say in an in-out referendum on continued membership of the EU.

Aware that his own party — which has its share of Eurosceptics — and the public will hold him to this, Cameron said in his victory speech on Friday: “We will deliver that in-out referendum on Europe.”

Then there is the question of Scotland. STANDING shoulder to shoulder with David Cameron at the Cenotaph because of a cruel quirk of timing, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg carried out their final duties as party leaders hours after they were humiliated in the most brutal and unexpected election result in decades.

By the time Cameron gave his victory speech outside Downing Street, his three

While the Scottish independence referendum was supposed to have been “one for a generation”, there are signs the nationalists will demand another, soon.

The Scottish National Party decimated Labour in its traditional stronghold in the north, winning 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland. This was 50 more than the SNP won in 2010.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has skirted questions on whether another demand for independence will be part of her manifesto for the Scottish parliamentary elections in May next year.

Cameron will have to work on what he has called “a new constitutional settlement” with Scotland in a bid to stave off another independence referendum, even as he follows through on his promise to renegotiate terms with Europe.

He, and the UK, will be almost main opponents had been decapitated after a night of blood-letting: Labour’s Miliband and Clegg of the Liberal Democrats had resigned, together with the UK Independence Party’s Nigel Farage. Before they could leave the stage, however, protocol forced Miliband and exclusively focused on issues closer to home.

Bar the “special relationship” with the US, there is going to be little focus on any other international or bilateral relations, including with South Africa.

Professor Richard Whitman, head of politics and international relations at the University of Kent, agreed that Cameron’s party would not allow him to forget the EU issue.

“[An EU referendum] also has domestic political consequences as well, in that it’s a device for managing his [Cameron’s] party,” said Whitman.

“Also, he’s got to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s EU membership, which is a phenomenally complicated activity to engage in.

“That’s going to take a really considerable amount of time. It’s just going to take a huge amount of political energy and effort and it will crowd out all Clegg to appear on TV with Cameron, putting on a united front as they laid wreaths at the Cenotaph during a VE Day 70th anniversary event.

In an election result that overturned pre-election polls:

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, became the biggest casualty as he lost

The EU issue will crowd out all sorts of other international relations issues

sorts of other relations issues.”

Cameron has navigated his way through the realm of international relations with a firm eye on the domestic political consequences.

The electorate — some of whom chafe at EU dictates governing aspects of their daily lives — cares far more about whether the UK can keep out unwanted European migrants and “benefits tourists” than it does about whether the SA-UK relationship is strong.

In the run-up to the election, Hain had said Labour could win,

international his seat in Labour’s worst showing since 1983. Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, and Jim Murphy, the Labour leader in Scotland, were other major casualties as Labour lost 26 seats overall;

The Lib Dems were almost obliterated, going from 57 seats to eight, with Vince and this would strengthen ties with South Africa. But the polls he and others relied on were misleading when they suggested that the race would be far closer than it turned out to be. The polling companies now face an independent investigation by the British Polling Council.

But they were not the only ones who got it wrong.

The day before the election, Nick Clegg was boasting that the Lib Dems would deliver a surprise at the polls. Instead, it was Clegg and his South African election strategist, Ryan Coetzee, who were surprised.

Coetzee, the former CEO of the DA, said on Twitter: “In the end we could not stem the tide that ran against us and the liberalism we offered Britain. I am sorry I could not do more to help.”

Whitman said the Conservatives just fought a smarter campaign, “brutal and negative . . . Cable, the business secretary, and Ed Davey, the energy secretary among those who lost their seats; and

Ukip had more votes than the Scottish National Party and the Lib Dems combined, but won just one constituency, which prompted Farage’s resignation as leader and his immediate calls for electoral reform. — © but very good” — and one that “stuck the Lib Dems with all the dirt” of the coalition government.

Coetzee’s mea culpa echoed those of Clegg and even Miliband, who tried for a defiant tone in his resignation speech but leaves having done worse than Brown in 2010 by sticking to his left-wing traditional Labour agenda and eschewing Blair’s more centrist approach.

Whitman said some of the negative press Miliband received from the right-wing media had hurt his campaign.

“One of the things he found impossible to turn around was that focus on him, him as a story, instead of Labour policies.”

Blair had warned that he feared 2015 would be an election “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result” — a Tory victory.