Cameron Upsets Everybody

(Map courtesy the Telegraph)

How strange — Scottish voters rejected independence last year and Labour this year. Labour was virtually “wiped out” in the Scotland as voters switched the the independence-minded Scottish National Party.

The Telegraph reports:

David Cameron was this morning set to triumph in the general election as Labour was virtually wiped out in Scotland and the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed.

There was an electoral earthquake in Scotland, with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP seeing unprecedented swings and decimating Labour north of the border.

Against all expectations, Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives picked up 22 seats and will (just barely) be able to form a government without a coalition partner in Parliament.

At Forbes, Marcel Michelson says a Conservative win may be a blow to anti-EU forces in the UK:

However, Cameron may be forced to reluctantly stay in the EU boat if he wants to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom and keep his business backers on board as well.

The latest exit poll result would mean the “Tories” do not need to find a new coalition to obtain a majority in the Lower House and could create a one-party government and strike it out on their own.

In any case, while the voters seems to have given Cameron a second term at Number 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister, they have not given a clear answer yet to whether they want to leave the European Union or not. Cameron famously said in 2013 that he would organize an “in/out” referendum on the European Union in 2017, after a period of renegotiation with the EU.

However, he made this promise based on an absolute majority for the Conservative Tory party in the 2015 parliamentary elections, against a background of a rise in support for the anti-EU UKIP party.

I’m less certain. A two-seat majority is nothing to brag about, and it isn’t like the Tory MPs are big EU supporters. If Cameron were to balk on his promised EU referendum, that could be big trouble for him in Parliament.

In any case, it was a hell of an election for the Conservatives — maybe their best since Thatcher.