The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, has swept back to power in United Kingdom general Elections. The election results have surprised all the pollsters who predicted a hung parliament leading to a coalition government, with smaller parties having a dominant say in government. Incumbent Prime Minister David Cameroon is all set to govern the United Kingdom for another five years.
In the 650 Seats, House of Commons the Conservative party has won 331 seats with a vote share of 36.9%. The Labour Party won 232 seats with a vote share of 30.5%, Scottish National Party won 56 seats with a mere vote share of 4.7% sweeping out the Scottish region and Liberal Democratic Party won 8 seats with a vote share of 7.8 %. Even after getting 12.7 % vote share the United Kingdom Independence Party could manage to win only 1 seat.
The conservative Party’s win is historical. Out of total 650 seats the conservatives have won 331, comfortably crossing the 326 mid-way mark. A distant second, the Labour Party won 232 seats, a loss of 26 seats. Its leader Ed Miliband has stepped down.The Labour party must now choose a new leader. Ed Miliband, who fought a spirited campaign on the promise of reversing the anti-austerity policies of previous coalition government, in his resignation message took “full responsibility” for the defeat of his party.
In Scotland, The Scottish National Party put up a spectacular performance, winning 56 of the 59 Scottish parliamentary seats, and putting an end to the domination of the Labour Party, which suffered heavy losses to the SNP in the region.
Setback for stalwarts
The elections saw the defeat of several senior leaders. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, Scotland’s Labour party head Jim Murphy and the party’s campaign head Douglas Alexander, all lost their seats, the latter to Mhairi Black, a 20-year-old SNP candidate.The senior Lib Dem leader and former Business Secretary Vince Cable lost his Twickenham seat, which he has held since 1987. So too former Energy Secretary Ed Davey who lost to the Conservatives in Kingston and Surbiton.
Historical win for Indian origin MPs
A record number of 10 Indian-origin candidates including Keith Vaz, Priti Patel and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law were today elected to the British Parliament. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Indian Diaspora champion , Ruling Conservatives’ Indian-origin stalwart, Priti Patel also retained her Witham seat with a 41.5 per cent majority, winning 27,123 seats.
Other Indian-origin winners include Prominent Labour candidates like long-serving MPs Keith Vaz (Leicester East) and Virendra Sharma (Ealing Southall),Valerie Vaz (WalsallSouth) ,Seema Malhotra (South West London), Alok Sharma (Reading West), Shailesh Vara (Cambridgeshire North West), another junior minister who has been an MP since 2005, First-timer Suella Fernandes (Fareham) for the Conservatives and a Labour novice Lisa Nandy (Wigan).
The overall tally of 10 Indian-origin MPs in the British Parliament breaks the previous 2010 general election record of eight. There were a total of 59 Indian-origin candidates in the fray from the Tories (17), Labour (14), Liberal Democrats (14), Green Party (4), United Kingdom Independence Party- UKIP (3), Independents (2) and one each from the smaller parties like All People’s Party, Christian Movement for Great Britain, National Liberal Party, Socialist Labour Party and Young People’s Party. Indian origin Candidates have done reasonably well as 10 out of them could manage to win.
