CAMERON ‘HEADING BACK TO NUMBER 10’
DAVID Cameron appears to be heading back to Number 10 today after ‘shy Tories’ delivered an extraordinary late election surge for his party. Voters took to the polls in huge numbers yesterday and, although
Britain was heading for a second hung parliament, the Conservatives were expected to pick up around 316 Commons seats.
In a triumph for the Tories, exit polls suggested they would be the first ruling party since 1983 to put on seats. Labour leader Ed Miliband’s career, and that of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, looked likely to have been brought to a crashing end.
Labour was on course for its worst result since Neil Kinnock’s defeat in 1987, with a forecast of 239 seats.
If TV exit polls are correct – and they were in 2010 – the Lib Dems face near wipeout and will be left with just ten seats. But the Scottish Nationalists delivered a political ‘tsunami’ and were on course to win up to 58 of the 59 seats in Scotland.
That leaves Nicola Sturgeon as the leader of what is easily the third largest party in Westminster – even though she is not an MP. Her success puts the 300-year-old Union between England
and Scotland in fresh peril. Tory chief whip Michael Gove said: ‘The Conservatives have clearly won this election – Labour clearly lost.
‘If it is the case that the exit poll is right, then David Cameron has won a very handsome victory at this election. He will have secured both an advance on seats and he will have outperformed the expectation of almost every commentator.’
Incredibly, as the first results came in, shadow chancellor Ed Balls insisted Mr Cameron’s tenure in Number 10 was on a knife edge and Labour might seek to form a coalition if the exit polls were out by ten seats.
That outcome would still leave his party behind the Tories by 50 seats or more.
All opinion polls had pointed to the second hung parliament in succession and a far closer result. But the shock exit poll figures would leave the Tories just 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 land- slide in 1997, when it hit 71.3 per cent. The most tumultuous results were in Scotland – where the rampant SNP was on course to seize most of the 41 seats Labour won in 010. Miss Sturgeon has vowed never to back Mr Cameron and to seek to join forces with Labour and seek to ‘lock the Tories out’.
Lib Dem HQ appeared confi- dent that Mr Clegg, who has faced a tough challenge from Labour in his Sheffield Hallam seat, would cling on – thanks largely to tactical votes from Conservatives.
But if the exit poll is right, and his party has lost four fifths of its MPs, he will come under pressure to rule out any second coalition and stand down. Ukip was confident of victory in just two seats – Clacton and Thurrock – following a lacklustre campaign, though it may have taken more than three million votes nationally.
Tory sources said the result in Thanet South, where Nigel Farage was attempting to become an MP, was very close and they believed the Ukip leader may have lost. The Ukip leader has vowed to quit if he fails to win the Kent seat.
Whitehall officials have assembled a team ready to swing into action today to oversee 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.
With fears that Britain could end up with a parliament so deadlocked that no stable government can be formed, Bank of England and Treasury officials had discussed potential responses if there is an extended period of deadlock.
But financial markets rallied on news of the exit poll.
The phrase ‘shy Tories’ was coined in 199 , when voters were reluctant to say they were backing the party.