Pundits had predicted the UK election would be a close one and suggested there would be days of post-vote, backroom talk to thrash out a power-sharing deal.
Instead, it’s turning into a thumpin’.
With almost all the results in, British Prime Minister David Cameron stays in power, with his party, the Conservatives, stronger than at the last election in 2010.
Reuters has reported that the center-right Conservative Party has won an “effective majority in Parliament with 324 seats.” That’s two seats short of an absolute majority.
As the dust settled Friday, three party leaders resigned, including opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
What this means for the UK is that the Conservatives get to govern alone after five years in a coalition.
What this means for the rest of the world is what we should be paying attention to, even if we were not one of the millions who cast a ballot.
The outcome of this vote could reshape the country’s global role for years: Britain’s relationships with the European Union, NATO and the United States could all be affected.
And a strong showing by the Scottish National Party, or SNP, could fuel a fresh push for Scottish independence.
Domestically, the Conservatives have said they’ll push forward with reforms to tackle the huge UK deficit and rein in spending on the welfare state as well as holding a national referendum on continued EU membership by 2017.
Financial markets, primed for days of uncertainty, responded positively to the prospect of a clear outcome.
Cameron is due to meet with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace at 12:30 p.m. (7:30 a.m. ET) Friday — a formal step toward forming a government. He is then expected to give a statement from Downing Street.
The losers
While the Conservative Party was the clear winner, there were plenty of losers.
Chief among them, Labour — the country’s chief opposition party.
Miliband, who retained his own seat, said he had to take “absolute and total responsibility for the result” and that he was resigning as party leader straight away.
He said it had been a privilege to head the party and that it had been “an incredible force for progress” — and would be again.
The night’s results were a massive blow to Labour. It didn’t gain seats in the places it badly needed to. And it was blown out of the water in Scotland by the pro-independence SNP, which took 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland — traditionally a Labour stronghold.
Miliband cited a “surge of nationalism in Scotland” as having badly affected the Labour Party.
Perhaps the biggest scalp claimed by the Conservatives at Labour’s expense was that of Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor and a senior Labour Party figure, who lost his seat by just 422 votes.
Another loser was the Liberal Democrat party. It was the junior partner in the previous coalition government with the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats too had an awful night.
Party leader Clegg, who became deputy prime minister in 2010, held his seat but said he was taking responsibility for the party’s “catastrophic losses” by resigning as party leader.
He had always expected the election to be “exceptionally difficult” for the Liberal Democrats, he said.
“But clearly the results have been immeasurably more crushing and unkind than I could ever have feared.”
The party lost several key figures — chief among them Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the treasury; Vince Cable, the business secretary; and Simon Hughes, former deputy leader of the party and a former London mayoral candidate.
Menzies Campbell, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “For us we must go back and once again build up from the bottom, from the bottom up which is the only way to do it.”
The UK Independence Party, seen as a threat to the Conservatives, also had a bad night, despite increasing its overall share of the vote.
The party held only one of its two seats and charismatic leader Nigel Farage failed in his own election bid. He announced he was resigning, as he’d previously promised if he didn’t take the seat.
Speaking after the result was announced, Farage said it was time for “real, genuine, radical political change” to the British electoral system to ensure that smaller parties are represented in parliament.
The winners
Cameron and his party clearly come out on top. The Prime Minister held his seat, as did Chancellor George Osborne — Britain’s finance minister — while London Mayor Boris Johnson claimed his place in Parliament for the Conservatives.
Speaking after winning his seat, Cameron said: “My aim remains simple — to govern on the basis of governing for everyone in our United Kingdom.”
This includes making sure that the country’s economic recovery reaches everyone, including its poorest citizens, he said.
“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 rightly promised and came together with other parties to agree both for Wales and for Scotland.”
The Scottish push
Another big winner is the SNP.
In one of the biggest shock upsets of the night, 20-year-old politics student Mhairi Black became Britain’s youngest lawmaker since 1667 — ousting one of Labour’s top figures in the process. Her victory for the SNP toppled Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election chief and a former Cabinet minister.
Labour’s Scottish leader, Jim Murphy, lost his parliamentary seat to Kirsten Oswald, another largely unknown challenger, while former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s old seat also went to the nationalists.
The SNP’s Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader who pushed for the unsuccessful independence referendum last year, won a seat at Westminster.
Salmond 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 party’s agenda. It also wants to end Britain’s nuclear weapons program, which could have an impact on the country’s relationship with NATO.
Nicola Sturgeon, its current leader and the winner of much acclaim during the campaign, said her party’s members of Parliament had promised they “would be elected to make Scotland’s voice heard and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”
But she said they would also seek “to work with others across the UK, to try to get more progressive politics at the heart of Westminster.”
The ‘repeat rebels’
While it looks like Cameron won’t need a coalition partner this time around, governing with such a slender majority won’t be easy.
“Although people will portray this as a great Conservative victory — and against the expectations it is — Cameron’s problems now are only just beginning because, if he’s only got a very small majority, he’s going to be in hock to the extreme right wing of his party,” said professor Robert Hazell of University College London. This right wing includes 10 to 20 “repeat rebels,” Hazell said, who could cause Cameron major headaches.
For the moment, though, he can give a big sigh of relief and savor the sweet taste of victory over Labour.