The race to succeed Ed Miliband begins tonight

sadedPhoto credit to Getty.

It’s been a massively disappointing night for the Labour Party.United Kingdom Flag Icon

English voters didn’t swing en masse to Ed Miliband. It certainly seems like southern voters stuck with the Conservatives and northern voters turned to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Leftist voters turned to the Green Party, which seems set to triple its national support.

Scottish voters abandoned Labour outright, swinging massively to the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP).

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RELATED: Live blog — UK election results

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It’s the kind of wipeout that will demand Miliband’s resignation — even before he’s delivered an address and even before the British media has declared a winner. It may not happen tonight, it may not happen tomorrow, but it will happen soon.

Labour’s top officials will wake up on May 8 trying to figure out just how in the span of 18 months, the Tories whittled down a 10-point Labour lead in polls. Despite only tepid GDP growth and five years of budget cuts, voters failed to warm to Ed Miliband’s leadership. In the span of months, Labour saw ‘fortress Scotland’ obliterated by the SNP. In the span of days, Labour saw a plausible, if narrow, lead nationally evaporate.

Plenty of Labour officials will be saying that they chose the wrong Miliband brother — and that the one who could have won the 2015 general election was instead sitting in New York City running an NGO after Ed Miliband nipped past him in the 2010 leadership race on the strength of the votes of labour unions. Continue reading The race to succeed Ed Miliband begins tonight

LIVE BLOG: UK election results

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Throughout the night, Suffragio will be live-blogging the results of the United Kingdom’s general election to elect all 650 members of the House of Commons.United Kingdom Flag Icon

BBC Exit Poll
10:23 pm GMT, 5:23 pm ET

It hardly seems correct, but BBC’s exit polls have the Conservatives just short of a majority, winning nine additional seats from the current House of Commons. It’s a fabulous drop for Labour, a great night for the Scottish nationalists and a horrific bloodbath for the Liberal Democrats. Nonetheless, if the numbers are correct, it will put the Tories in pole position to form the next government. Ironically, though the Lib Dems are forecast, in this poll, to lose 46 of their 56 seats, they would, together with the Tories, be able to cobble a majority. This assumes that Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic leader and deputy prime minister, holds onto his seat in Sheffield Hallam, and will enter into a fresh coalition with the Conservatives.

Note that the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which currently holds eight seats, could give a new Tory/Lib Dem coalition an extra margin of comfort. Note that if Sinn Féin wins five seats (as in 2010), the Tories need only a 323-seat majority, not 326, because those MPs refuse to sit in Westminster.

Conservative Party — 325 (revised from 316)
Labour Party — 232 (revised from 239)
Scottish National Party — 56 (revised from 58)
Liberal Democrats — 12 (revised from 10)
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) — 1 (revised from 2)
Green Party — 1 (revised from 2)

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Morley and Outwood
8:20 am GMT, 3:20 ET

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Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor who attacked the Tories relentlessly over austerity, has lost his election. A longtime aide to former prime minister Gordon Brown from 1990 until his election to parliament in 2005, Balls finished third in the 2010 Labour leadership election behind the two Miliband brothers. That he’s lost his Leeds constituency is Labour’s chief ‘Portillo moment’ — the defenestration of one of the party’s potential new leaders. Notwithstanding Balls’s defeat, his wife, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, remains a top contender to succeed Ed Miliband.

Conservative — 18,776 (17,264)
Labour — 18,354 (18,365)
UKIP — 7,951 (1,505)
LibDem — 1,426 (8,186)
Green — 1,264 (0)

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Brighton Pavillion
7:54 am GMT, 2:54 ET

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Caroline Lucas easily wins reelection, giving the Greens an important victory. The Green Party is now winning 3.7% of the vote nationally, but it will hold just this seat — Natalie Bennett, the party’s leader, who struggled at times during the campaign, finished third in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. Nevertheless, it represents a huge leap forward for the Greens — a rise from the 0.9% it won in 2010.

Green — 22,871 (16,238)
Labour — 14,904 (14,986)
Conservative — 12,448 (12,275)
UKIP — 2,724 (948)
LibDem — 1,525 (7,159)

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6:45 am GMT, 1:45 ET

I’m ending the live blog now. All three major party leaders are expected to address the public widely tomorrow, and there are still plenty of outstanding seats.

We’re still waiting for final results in Rochester & Strood, where UKIP MP Mark Reckless, a Tory convert, was expected to lose.

We’re also still waiting for South Thanet’s results, where Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, has said he’ll resign as UKIP leader if he loses the constituency.

In Leeds, we’re still waiting for results from the Morley and Outwood constituency, where Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls is in a tough fight — if he loses, Labour will lose a potential leadership candidate.

RELATED: The race to succeed Ed Miliband begins tonight

RELATED: Seven things to watch for in Cameron’s next government

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Solihull
6:11 am GMT, 1:11 ET

This was a classic seat — the Liberal Democrats had to win this seat to retain even 30  seats. Instead, it lost it by a wide margin.

Conservative — 26,956 (2,746)
LibDem — 14,054 (23,635)
Labour — 5,693 (4,891)
UKIP — 6,361 (1,200)
Green — 1,632 (0)

* * * * * Continue reading LIVE BLOG: UK election results

No matter who wins in the UK, deficit reduction will be the top goal

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Photo credit to AFP / Carl Court.

The one thing that both the Conservatives and Labour agree on in the 2015 election is that deficit reduction will be a priority for the United Kingdom’s next government.United Kingdom Flag Icon

To that end, when you put aside the sideshow of the proposed European Union referendum, the red lines and pledges about the National Health Service, and the vagaries of coalition politics with Scottish nationalists or Northern Irish unionists, the central question of the British general election is how to bring the budget deficit down from around 5% of GDP today to 3% or less by the end of the next government’s scheduled term in 2020.

No matter who wins today’s election, though, the next British government will prioritize deficit reduction. Though Labour leader Ed Miliband and prime minister David Cameron have very different visions for how to accomplish that, that they both agree on this goal is notable for two reasons. First, it puts Miliband and Cameron in agreement in a way that former prime minister Gordon Brown and Cameron never were in the 2010 election. Second, it means that Miliband has largely agreed to wage the 2015 campaign on Cameron’s own territory. Miliband conceded, long before the general election campaign even began, the central premise of Cameron’s 2010 campaign and subsequent government.  Continue reading No matter who wins in the UK, deficit reduction will be the top goal