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London, Prime Minister David Cameron today won a stunning majority in Britain, disproving predictions of a terribly hung Parliament and was on course to forming a single-party government ending a brief coalition era.
The surprise surge ahead by the Conservatives, led by 48-year-old charismatic Cameron, saw the party come back to power with 331 seats, just crossing the half-way mark in the 650-member parliament and is tipped to get four more.
“This is the sweetest victory of all,” Cameron told jubilant supporters at the party headquarters after the victory following which he does not need his ally Liberal Democrats with whom he had run the government since 2010.
Later in the afternoon, he met Queen Elizabeth II to seek her customary approval to form a new government.
Speaking in front of 10, Downing Street alongside his wife Samantha, Cameron said that “we are on the brink of something special in our country. As a majority government we will be able to deliver all our manifesto.” “We will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom. That means ensuring this recovery reaches all parts of our country, from north to south, to east to west,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first international leaders to congratulate him on Facebook with a reference to his campaign slogan: “As you rightly pointed out – it’s ‘Phir Ek Baar, Cameron Sarkar!’ My best wishes.”
Pre-poll predictions had said the verdict would be the closest in decades and forecast a scenario in which the winner would have to depend on more than one party to come to power.
Cameron’s Conservative Party’s win is the first outright majority for a party in Parliament since 1992 when John Major won unexpectedly.
The main opposition Labour Party suffered the second successive defeat winning only 232 seats, forcing its prime ministerial candidate Ed Miliband to quit as party leader.
“The responsibility for the result is mine alone. It is time for someone else to take forward the interests of this party,” he said in a brief speech to his supporters.
Centre-left Liberal Democrats were crushed at the hustings reduced to single digit (8) from 57 seats won five years ago.
Nick Clegg, the leader of the former coalition partner Liberal Democrats, stepped down with the words: “Fear and grievance have won, liberalism has lost.” Surprisingly, the Scottish National Party (SNP) that favours Scotland’s independence from Britain, produced a brilliant performance securing 56 seats, 50 up from the last elections, vanquishing Labour in its strongholds.
SNP’s victory is expected to be a kind of headache for the Prime Minister Cameron who sounded conciliatory promising quick devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales.
He also faces a vote which he has promised on continued membership of Britain in the European Union.
The UK Independence Party, an outfit that demands withdrawal from the EU surged into third place in the vote count but won only one seat.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who had famously quoted Mahatma Gandhi at the end of his campaign, failed to win his seat from Thanet South. He stepped down as party leader as per his pre-election pledge.
“The real reason to celebrate tonight, the real reason to be proud, the real reason to be excited is we are going to get the opportunity to serve our country again,” Cameron said.
“We will deliver that in-out referendum on Europe,” he promised.
He said governing with respect means recognising different nations of UK have their own governments as well as the UK government. The governments of these nations will become more powerful, he says.
“In Scotland, our plan is to create the strongest devolved government in the world,” he said.
Miliband, who won from Doncaster North seat, said it was a “disappointing night”.
“I am grateful to the people who worked on our campaign and for the campaign they ran. The responsibility for the result is mine alone,” he tweeted.
“Defeats are hard, but we’re a party that will never stop fighting for the working people of this country,” he said.
Clegg, who held on to his own Sheffield Hallam seat, said the “results have been crushing.”
Deputy Prime Minister under Cameron, Clegg said: “This is a very dark hour of our party, but we cannot and will not allow, decent liberal value to distinguish overnight.
“Our party will come back, our party will win again. It will take patience, resilience and grave that is what build our party before and will rebuild again,” he said.
The election has also thrown up some decisive victories for Indian-origin candidates, including Keith Vaz, Priti Patel and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law, Rishi Sunak.
This time the Indian-origin electorate, estimated at around 1.6 million, including India-born migrants, seem to have swung away from Labour and Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives.
“Cameron connected much better with the ethnic minority community, especially in the last 10 days of the campaign.
And, I am sure that has had an impact on the results,” feels NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul.
Earlier, after he won his seat in Witney, Oxfordshire, Cameron indicated he was all set to carry on “to bring the United Kingdom together” but struck a note of caution that it is “too early to say”.
The Conservatives are expected to have won a 37 per cent share of the national vote, Labour 31 per cent, UKIP 13 per cent, the Lib Dems 8 per cent, the SNP 5 per cent, the Green Party 4 per cent and Welsh Plaid Cymru 1 per cent.
The first election result came in from Sunderland just 50 minutes after the close of polling at 2200 local time on Thursday and it was a victory for Labour, which held on to its traditional stronghold.
The exit polls left a number of poll pundits baffled as it was not in line with the opinion polls which had suggested a far more neck and neck race between the Conservatives and Labour.
A total of 650 Westminster MPs were elected, with about 50 million people registered to vote in an election described as the most “unpredictable” in recent history.
The finishing line needed to form an absolute majority is 326, but because Northern Irish Sinn Fein MPs have not taken up seats and the Speaker does not normally vote, the finishing line has, in practice, been 323.
Total seats: 650
Results declared: 650.
Conservatives: 331
Labour: 232
Scottish National Party: 56
Liberal Democrats: 8
Democratic Unionist Party: 8
Others: 15
