Highlights of the process thus far.
Ginger Rodent and Esher McVey both bagged.

Incredible result really. After 5 years of largely unpopular austerity the Tories have somehow managed to increase their seats. A shocking performance by Milliband who will surely be off to the job centre on Monday.

Revised projections as of 8 am Friday have Conservatives on 329. Enough to form a slender majority.

Regardless of if he quite gets that many it's been a brilliant night for Cameron, (and the SNP). Meltdown for Labour, Cleggers, the pollsters, and probably 75% of people who post on The Sin Bin.

Ed Balls has gone! Good riddance.

Once the tories have redrawn the boundaries, they'll be looking at power for a generation

Yes, I'm sure Ed Balls & The Head Prefect will be just devastated today as they finalise preparations to take up lucrative business opportunities they've cultivated shamelessly over the past few years taking every last shred of advantage from the exclusive access they've had as senior members of the opposition party. What abject failures they are. ROFLMAO!

No need to redraw boundaries, Conservative government will give devo max to Scotland to keep SNP subdued and in parallel introduce some form of English votes for English laws. As a result even when SNP fades a bit Labour will never again be able to use Scottish MPs to pass laws in England that don't apply to Scotland (having said that I expect SNP to remain biggest party in Scotland for considerable future albeit I don't expect them to retain quite this level of dominance). As long as UK remains intact and we keep Trident it doesn't matter if Scotland has higher tax rates to pay for higher spendingn in Scotland, the SNP then have to make that trick work without tanking the Scottish economy.

The BBC are reporting that Ed Milliband is likely to step down in the light of the election results. What a great loss that will be...to political cartoonists, at least

The Scots are even bigger fools than we are. They've simply substituted one elite class of politician for another - and will be paying more for the privilege.

I'll give them until the next election before they're complaining bitterly about "broken promises". The SNP will likely learn the same brutal lesson the American Democratic Party did in the wake of the passing of Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act. At the end of the day "Freedom" is just a word. It's certainly no compensation for the guy across the border earning considerably more than you.

Incredible outcome really, showing just how far off the media in this country are when trying to gauge the British public. The media had us all convinced it was a split vote, nothing between Conservatives and Labour and only a coalition would create any form of Government. Goes to show that the public had very little faith in Labour's economic policy and the prospect of them joining up with the SNP to form a Government was too much.

Labour lost this election when they chose Ed Miliband to lead them. He isn't a strong enough character to carry off a job like that an ultimately he's completely failed to get his own policies across. The knives have been out for him this morning with many Labour figures slating him for a 'confused campaign' where the policies weren't well enough defined and many suggesting the Conservative campaign had been far more broad and far more concise.

An interesting day looms, one that could see the leaders of Labour, Scottish Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP departing. If that happens it would be a crushing victory for Cameron.

One interesting comment I heard this morning was that if the weather was sunny on the day of the election, people are far less likely to vote for change. Another blaming pencils and the complexities of having two voting forms and talking of thousands of votes being spoiled because people hadn't marked with a cross correctly. One has to worry about the future of the country if people can't mark an 'x' in a box with a pencil.

It's an interesting move from the Scottish. The media are now banging the referendum drum again. Do they have the power to hold another referendum again so soon after losing the previous one?

They'll include something in their 2016 Scottish election manifesto. Perhaps not demanding an immediate election (they'll want to wait for the oil price to rise) more about setting out conditions that would allow them to call a referendum. If they get a similar result in the elections they'll argue they have a mandate.

They have the freedom to do whatever the like. They have the power to achieve very little.

I'm sure most Scottish politicians who don't harbour notions of self-immolation will have taken heed of the colossal pressure that seemed to appear out-of-nowhere like a Amazonian python a few weeks before the referendum to take the vote away. At that point you can be certain they will have understood the message.

Challenging the mob boss' authority once is dangerous enough. Twice in short succession and you're practically begging to spend your next night sleeping with the fish.

I have to say the result went as I expected - ie a (probable) small Tory majority.

As I have said for 5 years Labour failed because it does not represent anybody. It tries to appeal to floating voters but gives nobody a reason to vote for them. Miliband was never a man for the British electorate but he per se was not the big problem. The problem was not communicating any policy until shortly before the election but even then in woolly, non-straightforward language and even then no coherent policy just piecemeal bits of attempted popularism. They have lost Scotland by that failure in representation and I doubt will ever get it back.

So, Labour need root and branch rethinking. They need a strong,campaigning, charismatic leader and to set out asap their vision of what they are about and who / what they represent. They then need to spend 5 years shouting it from the roof tops and being a forceful opposition. Do that and get it right and they may just turn it round. Don't and they are finished as an electoral force.

As to LibDems the commentators are talking tosh. All that has happened is they grew over recent elections as a party of protest and Clegg's pledge breaking 5 years ago (and I my view to a lesser extent their coalition) has made people realise they are not a decent protest vote and basically they are back to where they where a few elections back. UKIP have taken up the mantle of the protest vote but it is just that.

Labour by throwing away Scotland over recent years has probably destroyed itself. So, I guess we will need to reconsider the electoral system if that proves the case and the union may break.

As t shorter term ramifications - when do you think the first riots will be? Summer 2017 for me, although may be earlier.

Why would there be riots? The previous ones were race related, how long has it been since we had policitcal/economic protests on that scale?