From our UK edition
In our final podcast special of the 2015 general election, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the astonishing results and what we can expect from David Cameron’s new Conservative government. Are we finally going to see the unrestrained Cameron? Who is already limbering up to replace Ed Miliband as Labour leader? And what will the SNP and Liberal Democrats do next?
From our UK edition
After a very good night of results, David Cameron addressed party staffers at Conservative HQ in Westminster this morning. A clip of the Prime Minister's victory speech has made its way to Coffee House. You can watch what Cameron said below: Exclusive: David Cameron's victory speech to CCHQ staffers this morning #ge2015 #conservative https://t.co/nKtdhBVxr7 — Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) May 8, 2015 Here is the text of part of what Cameron told the gathered party staffers, all of whom appear to be a very jubilant mood: ‘..to be with you guys and say thank you, you are an amazing team. I’m not an old man but I remember casting a vote in ’87 and that was a great victory.
From our UK edition
Welcome to The Spectator's live coverage of the 2015 general election results. We provided results and analysis overnight and throughout the day. You can read all the coverage below. Key points: David Cameron remains PM —He has won a majority and has visited Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen. The Conservatives have won 331 seats. In an exclusive revealed by The Spectator, Cameron told Conservative HQ staffers this morning that 'this is the sweetest victory of them all'. Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage have resigned as leaders of their parties. SNP has swept Scotland — The SNP now have 56 MPs in Scotland, while the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats each have one.
From our UK edition
Home The country went to the polls. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, prepared by going around with his sleeves rolled up. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said that his pledges had been cut into an eight-foot slab of limestone. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, took a bus for John O’Groats. Stuart Gulliver, the chief executive of HSBC, said it would take ‘a few months, not years’ to decide whether to move its headquarters out of Britain. Sainsbury’s reported a loss of £72 million for the year, after writing down a fall in the value of some of its shops. Three tons of cocaine, worth perhaps £500 million, were recovered from a ship intercepted 100 miles east of Aberdeen; the nine Turkish crew were arrested.
From our UK edition
How will Ed Miliband manage tomorrow if Labour does end up the second largest party but with a viable ‘anti-Tory alliance’ in the House of Commons? The Tories are trying to craft a narrative that such a government would be illegitimate, and David Cameron will give a statement early on Friday. But there is a theory developing among some Tories who rate Miliband’s strategic skills that he could be about to produce his own clever game-changer too. He could be about to offer a significant devolution of powers to the regions, a huge transfer of power to Scotland and Wales, the elected Senate of the Nations and Regions that was promised in its manifesto as a replacement for the House of Lords, and electoral reform.
From our UK edition
A modernising, young Prime Minister advocates free schools, cuts taxes and oversees a job creation miracle – could voters really kick him out? It happened in Sweden six months ago when Fredrik Reinfeldt lost the general election, even though his successor failed to win a majority. Earlier this year, I caught up with Reinfeldt to talk to him about politics - and the problems of converting economic success into political capital His defenestration seemed horribly unfair. While much of Europe was in economic agony, Sweden was not: at the time, if you asked about the recession you were met with a blank stare. To an outsider visiting Sweden, its economic recovery was extraordinary. But to Swedes, it was rather boring.
From our UK edition
Never before — at least, not in living memory — has there been such a disconnect between north and south Britain. We vote together, but cast our ballots in very different contests. Scotland and England, semi-detached in the past, are more estranged than ever. The mildewed contest between David Cameron and Ed Miliband touches few hearts north of the Tweed; the battle between Labour and the SNP still mystifies many of those sent north to observe the strange happenings in Scotland. Edmund Burke wrote of another revolution: ‘Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies.’ Something similar might be said of this Scottish insurrection.
From our UK edition
The feral travelling Tory press pack were suited and booted this morning in the pouring Cheshire rain and led up a muddy path to a giant rock. No, David Cameron was not going to unveil his answer to a Miliband's carved pledge stone, in fact he wasn't going to say anything at all. You can imagine the spin doctor's train out thought for the last day of full campaigning in the longest, most tiresome election in modern memory. Let's got to the zoo! Let's go to tigers enclosure! Tigers are brave, PMs need courage and so on. Or perhaps they wanted to win Piers Morgan's vote; he has revealed today that he'll be voting for the Animal Welfare Party. Just one problem: there were no animals. The undeveloped part of Chester Zoo the media were treated to today won't open until next year.
From our UK edition
It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Nick Clegg. He’s a decent man who took a tough decision to put his party into coalition with the Conservatives, and lost half of his support as a result. Tomorrow, his party will be hammered. His great miscalculation was imagining that in England the Lib Dems would emerge with a list of achievements voters would applaud – as they did in the 2003 Holyrood elections when, after four years of coalition, the Lib Dems overtook the Scottish Conservatives to become the third-largest party. On the radio the other day Clegg vainly paraded his boast list, his own version of Kelly Clarkson’s Because of You. 'It’s because of us that 27 million people have received huge tax cuts.
From our UK edition
David Cameron’s 72-hour tour of Britain has finished up in the north west this afternoon. I have followed the Prime Minister to two campaign 'events' this afternoon — both purely for photo opportunities and neither involved meeting any ordinary voters. By this point in the campaign, knocking on doors is probably not the most effective use of time, so the best Cameron can hope for is to look enthused and feature in some colourful snaps. His first major event of the day was at a building site at Chester Zoo, in the heart of the Northern Powerhouse. A new tiger pen is being constructed, an ideal opportunity for the Prime Minister to point at rocks and piles of mud.
From our UK edition
All three party leaders are in the middle of their last-minute campaigning efforts, travelling across the country with little sleep. But what are they actually doing during these last few hours before polls open? David Cameron underlined that this isn’t just about meeting voters but about the photo opportunities by deciding to have a cosy chat with members of the farming community in Brecon… at 6 o’clock in the morning. The press were held back by this rather pointless pen (which later fell over) while the Prime Minister held his morning chat. To be fair, farmers do get up very early, though more to deal with their animals than for a leisurely cup of tea.
From our UK edition
Speaking to various senior Conservative backbenchers in the past 24 hours, I’ve been struck by how much support there is for the formation of another coalition. There is a recognition that if the Tories have around 290 seats on Friday morning—which is at the optimistic end of the election projections, it is simply not realistic for them to try and run any kind of minority government. The view among those I have spoken to is that Cameron should be given a decent amount of flexibility to negotiate a deal with the Liberal Democrats as that is the most likely way for the Tories to be able to begin to put together a majority in the Commons.
From our UK edition
The hours between polls closing on election day and the result emerging represent an almighty challenge for journalists and know-alls everywhere. Demand for punditry is huge, yet there is little to say, and nobody knows what is going to happen. Tomorrow evening, The Spectator will launch our own 'Pundyfilla Award for Inane Political Commentary' - but until then, here are a few stock phrases that should help everyone (remember, in the age of social media, we must all be journalists) sound as if they know their election onions: 'What I'm hearing is...' The TV correspondent's best friend. This line suggests an ear to the ground -- even if in truth 'hearing' means checking Twitter.
From our UK edition
Today's front pages have received criticism across the board for being too party political with the election only a day away. Now questions are also being asked as to why Peter Hitchens' weekly column was missing from the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. Instead, the columnist, who has been vocal about his disdain for David Cameron, tweeted his pre-election column from five years ago on Monday. The article asks readers 'not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project': https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/595229177843953664 So far no explanation has been offered and Hitchens has said that he is unable to comment on why his column was missing from the paper: https://twitter.
From our UK edition
Is David Cameron talking up the SNP as a naughty campaign tactic to hurt Labour? This morning the Prime Minister denied that charge in his Today programme interview, saying: ‘I don’t accept that; I’m fighting the nationalists in Scotland. Indeed, I’ll be there later today standing up for Conservative candidates who want a strong United Kingdom and also want our economy to continue to grow and continue to create jobs and all the other things the United Kingdom can do together.
From our UK edition
It is often said that we get the politicians we deserve. But throughout this election I have kept wondering, ‘Are we really as bad as all this?’ The answer must be ‘yes’. This bland and empty 'campaign' has not only been the fault of the main parties competing to govern the UK – it has also been a reflection of what they believe we, the general public, now expect from our politics. Of course the result is aggravating, in part because we keep trying to enjoy contradictory things. For instance at some point in recent years it was decided that any statement outside a vague centre-left orthodoxy constituted a ‘gaffe’.
From our UK edition
In today’s election special podcast, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss David Cameron’s election rally with Boris Johnson in Hendon and whether the Mayor of London has been underused during the campaign. We also look at how David Cameron has proven, yet again, to be the essay crisis Prime Minister — showing his passion just in time for polling day. Plus, we discuss how Ed Miliband has surpassed all expectations during the campaign.
From our UK edition
Eddie Izzard, Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan and Russell Brand. What is it with professional funny-men backing Labour? It's a little odd that when Miliband is trying to show the world what a serious, potential statesman he can be, he puts jokers in Labour's election broadcasts. Robert Webb, of Mitchell and Webb fame, is the latest to come out for Ed: 'I don’t need the Labour Party to have the kind of leader you’d want to put on a T-shirt and God knows they continue to oblige me. Ed Miliband’s favourite track is probably “Persuading in the Name Of” by Reform Against the Machine. It’s not my rage he needs, it’s my vote. He can’t do any of the above unless he’s prime minister. I know what to do about that. What will you do?
From our UK edition
At last, David Cameron has won an election. First News, a weekly newspaper for school children, organised a national Junior General Election and surprisingly the PM has romped home with 40 per cent of the vote. The Greens beat both Clegg and Farage, and Miliband managed just 22 per cent of the vote. Running these numbers through the BBC's election seat calculator, it would give Cameron 407 seats and a majority of 81. Here are the results in full: David Cameron, Conservative: 40 per cent Ed Miliband, Labour: 22 per cent Natalie Bennett, Green: 18 per cent Nick Clegg, Lib Dem: 9 per cent Nigel Farage, UKIP: 6 per cent Nicola Sturgeon, SNP: 4 per cent Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru: 1 per cent Numbers that the Tories could only dream of polling on Thursday.
From our UK edition
As well as trying to prepare voters for what may happen after 8 May, David Cameron needs to make sure he has his party on board for the ride after the election, too. The 1922 Committee will need to approve a second coalition, but the hope in the Cameron camp is that this will be made easier by making the approval a show of hands from Tory MPs, rather than the secret ballot 1922 Committee chair Graham Brady wants. Two interesting points that loyalists advance is that the Lib Dems approved the 2010 Coalition with a show of hands and that many prominent 1922 Committee Executive members were against the plan to elect the Speaker by secret ballot that the government tried to introduce rather sneakily in its last few hours.
