So has Miliband, using the word 'friends' every 5 seconds.

Hopefully he won't have any connections through which to find a good job, or he'll feel Mugwump's wrath.

I am not clear why you are so sure that the SNP will fade and Labour resurrect. The Tories have never recovered in Scotland, despite being extremely strong in the past. On holiday in Scotland last year I was surprised just how strong SNP sentiment is.

You are also assuming nothing will change. It is going to be hard for their not to a reworking of our system - probably very significantly increased devolution to Scotland allied to the same for Wales, NI, London and parts of England. That will serve to fracture the anti-Tory parties power.

Blimey, I would hate to see your definition of a disaster!!! Lost 30(ish) seats, wiped out in Scotland, lost their Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Foreign Secretary (to a school girl), Chief of Election Strategy and their Leader in Scotland.....in what was supposed to be the closest election in a generation, I am not really sure how it could have been much worse for them to be honest?

I agree. There is also one other factor. Luck.

The collapse in the price of oil handed the Tories an economic gift not of their making on a plate. It undermined Labour's "cost of living crisis" stance which before that happened had quite some traction. The fact the electorate have not realised the respite will be temporary is testament to the stupidity of most of it.



I think the UKIP factor will diminish pretty rapidly whatever the outcome of any EU referendum but I think the Lib Dems are toast for a long, long time. They are back to where they were in the 60's and 70's which was tantamount to being politically irrelevant.

As to Labour and Tories, Labour have potentially dodged a bullet and I don't mean dodging any impending economic disasters.

Even had they won their target seats they would be a minority yet would feel obliged to vote down a Tory Queens speech. Even if the rules say that then Labour gets a go at forming a government and if they did despite the fact it would be technically legitimate the Tory press would never have it. They would in my view have set themselves up to fail far worse than now between now and the next election. For that not to happen they would have had to have been very successful and given the current economic state of the country that would be very hard to do.

The Tories might be delighted today but reality will soon set in. I was half convinced they didn't want to win this time given the way the economic pointers are going. They have cut and sold just abut all there is cut and sell. Not much low hanging fruit left to prune and they have no other ideas. It won't take much for the odd by-election to turn them into a minority government and even as it is, the sh !t wiil hit the fan pretty soon internally with them. They are a divided party when it comes to the EU and other things as well.

If the Tories go through with their promised £12bn of cuts and people pull out of their lethargy, there will be riots when thousands more disabled and terminally ill people commit suicide after IDS and ATOS's "mistakes" in deeming them fit to work and cancelling their help.

Or when the Tories savagely privatise the NHS - something they laid the groundwork for on the last day of parliament by forcing all NHS contracts to be put out to tender.

Or when they take away all support for anyone under the age of 25, despite the lack of job creation and the highest youth unemployment on record.

So one of those reasons, probably.

Ed Miliband has quit as well.

The Tories aren't interested in Scotland at the moment. Which is why they've never really poured serious money into the region in an attempt to buy votes.

Support for the only real Scottish Party has pretty much always been strong. I mean, why WOULDN'T it be (kind of makes one wonder how the SNP could possibly have lost its referendum ...)? But it's one thing to exert influence within the over-arching framework of British government - a bit like a Turkish satrap who ultimately must bow before the Great King of Persia. It's something else to tell Artaxerxes you're going to run his kingdom for the greater benefit of his subjects. Especially when you wield absolutely no political clout and don't possess a couple of thousand bloodthirsty Macedonian mercenaries to serve as an incentive.

Until this point the British establishment has been happy enough to indulge the SNP's little fictions of power. But the moment they decided not to stick to the rules and called for a referendum the gloves came off. They might as well have brandished an IRA flag because from herein they represent a threat to hundreds of years of "successful" establishment.

This election result will only exacerbate tensions. Sure, the SNP can rely on the average Scot's sense of patriotism and dislike of England. But that only stretches so far. If history teaches us anything it is that it doesn't take a great deal of economic strife before even the most entrenched loyalties begin to disappear.

Salmond and company will very shortly reap the whirlwind. And it won't be pretty.

This.

Sales of rose tinted specs are doing well today.

Well, we do know that the Tories are at the very least [ipreparing [/ifor major civil unrest. For instance, Boris recently shelled out a couple of million on two giant riot-control armoured vehicles with whopping great water cannons attached.

Presumably he doesn't want his City of London chums having to commute to work in fear of their safety ...

He should return to being a corridor prefect at Eton.

Seriously, tho - Milliband is just so FREAKISHLY the sum total of every swotty little snot wearing a school prefect badge you ever had to put up with.

I mean, if you were deliberately aiming to lose an election based purely on perceptions of the leader is there a better candidate to pick?

Labour lost this election 4 1/2 years ago when they chose Ed Milliband to lead them. Totally unelectable. Like a masochistic contortionist the Labour party managed to kick itself in the face while lying battered on the ground.

I do wonder what the LimpDem supporters were doing yesterday. Are they angry that their party sold them out by turning Tory? If so then going out and voting Tory (which many seem to have done) doesn't make a lot of sense.

Joking aside (and laughter is a good way of dealing with despair), this seems to be a resounding victory for nationalism. The Tories and UKIP did well with the white working class and that appeal has to be nationalism, leaving the EU, English laws for the English. The SNP by definition only want to leave the UK.
The two parties fully commited to the Union and to the EU are destroyed. Let the rhetoric and the animosity beteween England and Scotland commence. The war on the EU will kick off as well.

Nationalism always works out well in Europe doesn't it.

We were in Skye a couple of years ago obviously before the referendum. Also visited friends in Edinburgh another time. Both before the referendum. Evidence of the SNP and even nationalism? Hardly any. I saw one car sticker in Skye and most of the people we spoke to never mentioned it and those who did were quite hostile.

Something dramatic changed but lets not forget the electoral system has played a part here as well. They got around half the vote yet virtually all the seats. That is a dramatic increase in seats for that sort of share of the vote. So in theory it won't take much to rob them of those gains in terms of a swing. The problem is not the SNP's strength but the weakness of the opposition. It ought not to take much to move that result dramatically the other way but there isn't any party offering up anything to do that.

Ian Duncan-Smith, Micheal Foot? It's close, but Ed Millibland wins it for me.

I think Jimmy Saville would have done better than Ed Balls.

Sturgeon's face couldn't hide their real dissapointment. Their real objective was to be in government in Westminster with a coatlition with Labour or governing by proxy by propping up a Labour minority government. They have nothing now. 1 seat or 50 makes sod all difference when a majority Tory government is in charge. They set their cards on the table by going after Labour - not the Tories. They are not a UK national party, they can never win more than they have in Scotland and maybe the Scots will see that. Better a friendly Labour government that relies on Scottish Labour MP's than a toothless SNP just making a farty little noise in Westminster.

There is also a reason why Salmond has only recently popped his fat f*****g head up. Many Scots think he's a total t0$$er.

The Labour party itself voted for his brother. However because the Trade Unions have a large amount of votes in who is the Labour leader, they voted for the union friendly Ed.