l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 The UK results are in. The pollsters could not have been more wrong. The
expected result was a close vote and a hung parliament. Instead, Labour and
the Liberal Democrats got pounded. Here are the Final Tallies from the
Guardian.
In a surge of nationalism that will likely lead to a call for another
independence referendum, the Scotland National Party (SNP) won 56 seats of
59 seats.
Nigel Farage did not win his seat, but he will be around. So will UKIP. It
appears UKIP did not take votes from the conservatives, but rather its anti-
immigration platform took votes from Labour.
Major Outs
Ed Milliband - Labor Leader - Resigned
Nick Clegg - Liberal Democrat Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister -
Resigned
Ed Balls - Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Labour - Not Reelected
Jim Murphy - Scottish Labour Leader - Not Reelected
Douglas Alexander - Labour Campaign Manager - Not Reelected
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Business Secretary - Not Reelected
Danny Alexander, Liberal Democrat Treasury Chief Secretary - Not
Reelected
Liberal Democrats - Lost 49 of their 57 Seats
Wow
How could the polls have been so wrong?
Clean Sweep Masks Huge Rifts
The Financial Times reports David Cameron Sweeps to Victory in UK Election.
David Cameron, UK prime minister, has swept back into Downing Street
after a dramatic election victory, winning an outright majority for his
centre-right Conservative party.
Britain faces an unprecedented strain after triumph for leftwing
Scottish nationalists who won all but a handful of Scotland’s seats,
becoming the third-largest party in Westminster just eight months after
losing an independence referendum.
The election result also sets the stage for a bruising fight over
Britain’s membership of the 28-member EU. Mr Cameron has promised to hold a
referendum on continued EU membership and wants to win back more control
over some issues from Brussels.
Meanwhile, Mr Miliband told supporters he was stepping down because the
Labour party needed an “open and honest debate about the right way forward
”. The centre-left party won 232 seats in a crushing defeat for Mr Miliband
, whose campaign to make Britain more equal failed to capture the nation’s
imagination.
Mr Clegg, who served as deputy prime minister in the coalition, stepped
down as Lib Dem leader after his party suffered devastating losses across
the country with the number of seats plunging from 57 to eight.
He said the results were “immeasurably more crushing and unkind than I
can ever have feared”.
Nigel Farage, the charismatic leader of the UK Independence party, quit
after failing to win the South Thanet seat, despite the anti-EU party
becoming the third-biggest in terms of national support. It won just one
seat under Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system.
The Scottish National party won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats, up from six
in the last election in 2010, sweeping senior Labour figures from office in
the party’s traditional heartland and setting the stage for a deeply
divided parliament.
“The Scottish lion has roared this morning across the country,” said
Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader, who won the seat he was contesting
and said it was “inconceivable” for any Westminster government to ignore
the united voice of Scotland.
Despite losing the Scottish independence referendum by 55-45 per cent
last year, the SNP surge at this election could lead to further demands for
a more federal settlement in the UK and add to pressure for a second
referendum.
Milliband Resigns
The Guardian reports Ed Miliband Resigns as Labour Leader
A devastated Ed Miliband has resigned as leader of the Labour party,
saying he is truly sorry for the scale of the party’s crushing defeat.
In an emotional speech, Miliband said it was time for someone else to
take over as leader, but called on the party to keep fighting, rather than
give in to despair.
“I take absolute and total responsibility for our defeat. I am so sorry
for all of those colleagues who lost their seats,” he said on Friday.
Ending on a defiant note, he said: “This party has come back before and
will come back again.”
Miliband’s close staff are said to be deeply upset, struggling with the
disappointment made deeper by opinion polls that led them to believe they
had blocked Cameron from beating a clear path back to Downing Street.
Miliband described the result as very difficult and disappointing, adding
that the party in Scotland had been overwhelmed by a surge of nationalism.
Some union leaders will be questioning whether they should break from
the party, or at least demand major changes on electoral reform, Europe and
immigration. Labour will be concerned over signs that Ukip is establishing a
secure foothold in the north of England and Wales.
In many respects Miliband had presented the agenda the unions wanted on
issues such as workers’ rights, tax and regulation of markets. But some
union leaders will argue that the party’s problems are deep-seated, dating
back to the period of New Labour, when it lost touch with its working-class
base, reflected in the surge of support for Ukip.
The former Labour cabinet minister John Reid said: “There is no point
changing the captain on the bridge if the ship is heading in the wrong
direction.” He said elections were not won or lost in a short campaign, but
over years, calling for the party to return to issues of wealth creation,
as well as wealth distribution.
Goodbye Labour
Any party that campaigns for higher taxes and wealth redistribution deserves
to get trounced. And Labour did get trounced. Liberal Democrats all but
vanished as UKIP became the third largest party with more votes than SNP.
Yet, SNP has 56 seats, Liberal Democrats 8, and UKIP one.
SNP still wants independence. And UKIP still wants out of the EU. The "clean
sweep" by the Tories masks those problems. Meanwhile, pollsters have to be
wondering "how the hell did we get this so wrong?" |
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