One of the closest British elections in recent memory didn’t take long to create its own history in early counting Friday as a 20-year-old Scottish student became the country’s youngest lawmaker since 1667 — ousting one of the opposition Labour Party’s top figures in the process.
In what was proving to be a tough night for the opposition Labour Party, politics student Mhairi Black, representing the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), took Paisley and Renfrewshire South, a constituency outside Glasgow, Scotland, from Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election chief and a former Cabinet minister.
“I pledge to use this voice not just to improve Scotland, but to pursue progressive politics for the benefit of people across the UK,” Black told supporters during her acceptance speech.
To make matters worse for Labour, the party’s leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, also lost his parliamentary seat to another nationalist, Kirsten Oswald. And the SNP claimed former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s old seat of Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath.
Current opposition leader Ed Miliband held his seat. However, he told supporters it has “clearly been a very difficult and disappointing night for the Labour party.” He cited a “surge of nationalism in Scotland” as having affected the Labour party’s results.
Alex Salmond, who led Scotland as First Minister and pushed for the unsuccessful independence referendum last year, also won a seat at Westminster.
The Liberal Democrats, junior partners in the previous coalition government with the Conservatives, also lost some key figures — chief among them Vince Cable, who held a position in the previous Cabinet as Business Secretary, and Simon Hughes, a former London mayoral candidate. Current leader Nick Clegg, who was Deputy Prime Minister, held his seat.
By contrast, the incumbent Conservatives were being touted to make big gains — current London Mayor, Boris Johnson, being the most prominent figure in the party to win a parliamentary seat so far.
Results from an exit poll run jointly by the BBC, Sky News and ITN project Conservatives in the lead and gaining 14 seats in Parliament, going from 302 seats to 316. Official results have only been announced for a few seats, and it isn’t clear whether the exit poll’s projection will hold true. But if it does, it’s a result that would keep Prime Minister David Cameron in power and could strengthen his party’s pull.
“It’s an astonishing result,” said Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, a former British Cabinet minister. “If it holds up … the momentum, the authority that this result would give David Cameron and the Tories would be huge, and the body blow to Labour equally big.”
‘Shock’
Front pages of at least two British newspapers described the projections as a “shock.”
But some pollsters cast doubt on the broadcasters’ exit poll prediction that Cameron’s Conservative Party would gain seats and Labour would lose them. Polling before the election, they said, pointed toward a much tighter race.
A top British Labour politician also said the projection didn’t seem to jibe with earlier figures.
“It’s very different from what we’ve been hearing on the ground across the country,” Ed Balls said on CNN affiliate ITN. “I’m not sure this is going to turn out to be right.”
Even though the final tally isn’t in, one thing is clear: This is an election you should be paying attention to, even if you’re not one of the millions of Brits who cast a ballot.
It’s an election that could reshape the country’s global role for years. Britain’s relationships with the European Union, NATO and the United States are hanging in the balance. And the Scottish National Party might get a major boost at the polls that could fuel a fresh push for Scottish independence.
‘Most important election in a generation’
Cameron has called it “the biggest and most important election in a generation.” And this time, that age-old political rallying cry could actually turn out to be true.
As he campaigned this week, he touted what he said was the country’s economic recovery under his Conservative leadership. “I’ve now laid my brick,” he said, claiming that the big payoff is yet to come for Britain as the country builds on the work he’s done.
He’s also said that if re-elected, he’ll hold a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union.
On the other side, the Labour Party’s Ed Miliband — who prides himself in standing up to U.S. influence — has been promising higher taxes on the wealthy and protection of Britain’s public health system.
“We’re fighting for a Britain where we reward the hard work of every working person,” he said this week, “not just those who get the six figure bonuses in our country.”
Either Cameron or Miliband will become Prime Minister, but it seems likely they will need support from smaller parties to form a majority and get the keys to 10 Downing Street.
The days of two-party politics are long gone. Leading up to this election, the growing popularity of fringe parties on the left and right has kept the race ultratight.
All the opinion polls since Parliament broke up in March have pointed to the Conservatives and Labour being neck and neck, with each party’s predicted share well within the margin of polling error.
The election is not a vote for who will be Prime Minister, but its outcome will determine who leads the United Kingdom going forward and whether Cameron keeps the top job.
A total of 650 members of Parliament will be elected, representing constituencies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Whichever political party has the most members of Parliament elected will be invited by Queen Elizabeth II to form a government. If there’s no clear winner, then a minority or coalition government may be formed.
Is exit poll accurate?
Many observers had predicted no clear winner and suggested there would be days of post-vote, back-room talk to thrash out a power-sharing deal.
But the exit poll seemed to be pointing toward a more decisive result — a possibility that British tabloids quickly seized on with their Friday front pages.
The Daily Mirror lamented the projected Conservative victory.
The Sun took a more triumphant tack, with a smiling photo of Cameron front and center.
‘An electoral tsunami’
If Labour were to gain power, it would lead the most left-leaning British government since the 1970s.
If the exit poll results hold up for Conservatives, a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union could be in the offing.
Cameron has been promising to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership in the bloc and to hold a vote by 2017 on whether Britain should stay in. That pledge came amid pressure from skeptical members of his own party and an insurgency from the United Kingdom Independence Party, led by charismatic everyman Nigel Farage, who wants to pull Britain out of the EU and also wants to curb immigration and make it harder for immigrants to get state benefits.
That party, which Cameron once derided as full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists,” threatens to siphon away votes from the Conservatives and make it much more difficult for the party to build a House of Commons majority.
The Liberal Democrats might pay the price for serving in a government that has taken a tough austerity line.
Then there is the Scottish National Party, resurgent despite losing the vote for independence in September 2014. Polling suggests it could win all the seats in Scotland and easily become the third biggest party at Westminster.
The British broadcasters’ exit poll projected the party would win 58 of Scotland’s 59 Parliament seats, a sweeping victory that even the party’s leader said sounded too good to be true.
Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader, said no matter what the final tally is, the result is clear.
“We’re seeing an electoral tsunami on a gigantic scale,” he told ITN, “and that is a tide flowing with the Scottish National Party.”
A big win for the party could accelerate the resurgent momentum toward another Scottish independence referendum in the years to come.
But gaining independence for Scotland isn’t the only issue on the Scottish National Party’s agenda. They also want to end Britain’s nuclear weapons program, which could have an impact on the country’s relationship with NATO.
Nicola Sturgeon, its leader and the winner of much acclaim during the campaign, has vowed not to form a pact with the Conservatives, but her past overtures to the Labour Party have been rebuffed.
The bottom line: It could all get very messy. And very Un-British.