General Election 2010: Polls spell marching orders for Gordon Brown
GORDON BROWN was preparing to be handed his marching orders from Downing Street this morning as early results suggested a massive vote for change in the hardest fought General Election in a generation.
With a huge turnouts of up to 70 per cent across the country, early General Election results suggested showed a substantial swing from Labour to the Tories but few advances for the Lib Dems.
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A string of seats – including Kingswood, Basildon South, Loughborough, Battersea and Clacton – fell to the Tories from Labour while Nick Clegg appeared to have failed to achieved his dream of a major breakthrough at Westminster.
Conservatives also scored astonishing triumphs in Wales, taking Aberconwy and the Vale of Glamorgan from Labour and ejecting high-profile Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik in Montgomeryshire.
They also took the key seat of Chester But David Cameron’s hopes of becoming Prime Minister were hanging in the balance early today with initial results putting the country on course for a hung Parliament.
With just over 100 seats declared at 2.30am, results showed a swing of 4 per cent to the Tories, short of the 6.9 per cent needed to guarantee the Tory leader a Commons majority.
The Tories had gained 12 seats overall while Labour had lost 11. Among those was the key seat of Chester.
Despite the uncertainty, senior Labour MPs were last night conceding defeat as the first results rolled in.
Former Labour cabinet minister David Blunkett admitted: “My instinct is we have lost the election.”
As the election was teetering on a knife, Mr Brown was still plotting to cling on to power for as long as possible.
Downing Street sources said that the Prime Minister was ready to offer to form a coalition government. A crushed Mr Brown struck a sombre, valedictory tone in his speech after being re-elected in his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency.
He pledged to play his part in Britain “having a strong, stable and principled government”. But senior Tories were insisting Mr Brown had to stand aside.
Tory frontbencher Kenneth Clarke said: “The one thing that’s clear is that Gordon Brown can’t possibly carry on as Prime Minister. He’s lost all authority to govern, he is going to fall away very badly.”
In the first significant result of the night, the Tories snatched the crucial bellwether seat of Kingswood in Bristol with a swing of 9.4 per cent. Labour’s vote was also collapsing in the party’s northern heartlands.
The first flurry of results suggested a massive slump in the Labour vote even in the party’s north east heartlands. In Tony Blair’s former constituency of Sedgefield, Labour held on but there was a huge 11.6 per cent swing to Labour.
The first result of the night, from the safe Labour seat of Houghton & Sunderland South, showed a massive 8.4 per cent swing from Labour to the Tories. The figure was enough to put Mr Cameron at the head of a comfortable working majority in the Commons.
Phillipson held on to the seat for Labour securing 19,137 votes, with Conservative candidate Robert Oliver second with 8,147. Senior Tories described the swing against Labour as an “utter rejection” of Mr Brown and the government.
In neighbouring Washington & Sunderland West, the Tories scored a spectacular 11.6 per cent swing.
As news of Labour’s setbacks rolled in, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: “Of course, many people have turned away from the Labour Party but what they haven’t done is to fly into the arms of David Cameron’s Tories.”
Asked if Labour would do a deal to stay in power, he told BBC News: “The constitutional conventions are very clear.
“The rules are that if it’s a hung parliament, it’s not the party with the largest number of seats that has first go - it’s the sitting government.”
Earlier, a dramatic exit poll suggested the country was heading for a hung Parliament.
The exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky News forecast 307 House of Commons seats for the Tories, 19 short of an overall majority.
Gordon Brown’s Labour would have 255 seats and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats would have 59 seats, according to the poll of 18,000 voters.
But the final result was too close to call, but it was clear that Labour had been decisively rejected in the general election. Mr Cameron said: "This is a decisive rejection of Labour. We can govern with this result."
Tory sources insisted Labour were on course to lose the most seats since 1931. The closely-fought poll represented a damning verdict on Labour’s 13 years in power.
More than 44 million people were registered to vote for the 650 MPs of the new Parliament, with polling stations open from 7am until 10pm. Voters were also electing councillors in 166 local authorities across England.
