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The Conservatives have emerged as the dominant force in English politics after a string of surprising wins in key constituencies. Significant gains in the marginal "killing fields" helped the party to a comfortable majority. In a night of upheaval, seats previously considered Labour and Lib Dem strongholds turned blue as results trickled in. Several high-profile names including Ed Balls and Vince Cable lost their seats. Failure to win key marginals, combined with Labour losses in Scotland, prompted Ed Miliband to stand down. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg resigned as Liberal Democrat leader after his party suffered heavy losses and UKIP leader Nigel...

Ukip supporters have woken up this morning to find that the party retains only 1 MP, but they will surely feel cheated by an election system that has handed the SNP over 56 MPs for a much smaller number of votes. Despite bringing in almost 4 million votes, making Ukip the third biggest party by vote share, this election has seen the fall of their leader Nigel Farage and second MP Mark Reckless. The spectacular success of the SNP in Scotland throws into sharp relief the unfairness of the first-past-the-post system on smaller parties. By the time Farage lost his...

At 9:21 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday in America, former top Obama aide David Axelrod conceded the UK election. “Congratulations to my friend @Messina2012 on his role in the resounding Conservative victory in Britain,” Axelrod wrote on Twitter. The surprisingly decisive victory for Prime Minister David Cameron and his Tories also delivered a big win to Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, who advised the Conservative Party and triumphed over his fellow Obama aide, Axelrod, who advised the Labour Party.

Bookmakers place former health secretary ahead of Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna and others to take over in wake of Miliband resignationAndy Burnham has emerged as the favourite to replace Ed Miliband, after the Labour leader stood down in the hours after the party’s disastrous general election result. Bookmakers placed the former health secretary ahead of Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna and others to take over from Miliband. According to one bookmaker, David Miliband was also in the running. But others agreed that Dan Jarvis and Tristram Hunt had a better chance. The contenders Andy Burnham Live Election live: Osborne and May...

An archeological dig in Pocklington has unearthed a prehistoric man buried with a shield. The skeleton was found in one of the square barrows at the recently discovered Iron Age burial ground on Burnby Lane, which is where developer David Wilson Homes is planning to build 77 new houses. MAP Archaeological Practice, the company which is carrying out the excavation work, says it has also discovered a man "of an impressive stature." The site has so far yielded more than 38 square barrows and in excess of 82 burials... Several of the square barrows contain personal possessions, including jewellery, and...

George Galloway, the socialist firebrand best known in America for his condemnations of Israel and the Iraq War, was soundly defeated for re-election to Parliament in Thursday's British general election. Galloway, a former Labour member who won the seat for Bradford West in the northwest of England in a 2012 special election, was beaten by Labour's Naz Shah, a political newcomer who overcome childhood poverty, a teenage forced marriage and the imprisonment of her mother for killing an abusive partner. Shah had urged voters to reject Galloway because "we do not need a one-man Messiah to tell us how to...

How child rape gangs were allowed to flourish to protect the leftist political establishment The horrific story of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, England, has taken another tawdry turn. “Jessica,” who was victimized as a child, insists local politicians “buried the truth to suit their own ends.” “I’ve said all along that this has been about two things—money and power,” she explained. “Girls like me were sacrificed because no one wanted the boat rocked because they knew it’d cost them votes if the finger of blame was pointed and because they thought we were worthless.” The votes to which Jessica...

A national disaster sweeps Britain In a gut-wrenching development, it may turn out that last year’s report detailing a decade-and-a-half of sexual exploitation inflicted on at least 1,400 children from Rotherham, England—and the PC-driven effort to cover it up—may represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The city’s Labor MP Sarah Champion believes as many as one million children may have been victimized, describing it as a “national disaster” that requires the establishment of a task force to deal with the “horror.” Champion picks up the story following the release of a report, titled “The Independent Inquiry Into Child Exploitation...

Rotherham’s Labour MP Sarah Champion describes it as a “national disaster” and is demanding a taskforce to fight the “horror"

4 minutes agoNigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, has failed to win a seat in the House of Commons.

David Cameron's second term as British Prime Minister was confirmed Friday after his Conservative Party won enough seats to form a working majority in the 650-member House of Commons. Shortly before noon Friday, London time, the Conservatives, or Tories, had won 324 seats to 229 It would be the first time the Conservatives had won a parliamentary majority since 1992. Cameron is the first Conservative Prime Minister to win re-election since Margaret Thatcher.

I have today written to UKIP's National Executive Committee and offered my resignation. I look forward to a well deserved holiday!— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) May 8, 2015

<p>Labour Party grandee Jack Straw, leaving Parliament after 36 years that included several Cabinet stints, called the party's showing in Scotland "an unbelievably bad situation in Scotland which frankly nobody anticipated."</p> <p>Throughout the campaign, Scottish voters told pollsters and journalists they were tired of being taken for granted by Labour, and many had not been impressed when Miliband joined forces with Cameron to urge Scottish voters to reject independence in last September's referendum. Scots whose families had for decades voted Labour turned away in droves.</p>

:: Follow the election results live on skynews.com, our mobile apps and on Sky News TV from 10pm. Voters are going to the polls across the country to decide who will form the next government. Polling stations opened at 7am and close at 10pm in the United Kingdom's 650 constituencies.

The Times and the Mirror are citing royal sources suggesting that the Queen could end up running the nation if there is no clear winner in the UK election. But does she have the power to fire or hire a prime minister?

Computer scientists from the University of Warwick are using Twitter to predict the outcome of the UK general election and believe their forecasts could be more accurate than traditional opinion polls. They are working in collaboration with partners in the Department of Journalism at City University London and the Information Technologies Institute (ITI-CERTH, Greece). Together, the team is using an algorithm that harvests political tweets, aggregates various features about every party and then injects this information into conventional polling reports, producing a daily prediction of voting share. With the outcome of the general election in terms of seats more uncertain...

...The prospect of an in-out EU referendum driven by David Cameron's desperate attempts to keep the Conservatives together on Europe while fending off the threat from the UKIP [insert laughter here -- 'Civ] right is a nightmare scenario for the Irish government. Dublin often takes comfort from hiding behind Britannia's skirts in Brussels when the British take all the flak for opposing tax and other financial harmonisations in a belligerent stance that also benefits Ireland. With Nick Clegg trading away yet another of the Lib Dems principles and doing a U-turn on his previous opposition to a referendum, if Cameron...

American taxpayers will pony up around $3.024 billion this year towards the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budgets, more than what 185 other countries combined are paying, an expert on the international body told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.While the U.S. contribution in 2015 to the U.N. regular budget is $621.9 million, the 35 countries contributing the least will pay just $28,269 each, Heritage Foundation scholar Brett Schaefer told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee responsible for multilateral institutions.And where the U.S. will pay $2.402 billion towards the separate peacekeeping budget, the 20 countries contributing the least will pay just $8,470 each.Putting...

The title of this post is the headline of the "Daily Express" newspaper in the UK today, its owner supports the United Kingdom Independence Party. Under the headline: "Farage and UKIP boosted by 'very strong' late surge" "Labour and SNP would be absolutely disastrous for us all" The article starts: "The UK Independence Party is poised to 'significantly and perhaps dramatically' beat poll predictions thanks to a late surge in patriotism, it said last night. Amid warnings of the risks from Labour and the SNP, millions go to vote today in what looks like being the tightest election for generations....

As a public service, here is a brief guide for Americans to tomorrow's British elections. Not that you really need one. The operating principle is easy enough to understand -- like the British taste for delicacies like toad in the hole, bubble-and-squeak and spotted dick. Not to mention specialties like kippers salty enough to make the Dead Sea seem alkaline. As I said, easy to understand. Like the game of cricket, whose rules are as clear to an American as a London fog. Once the election returns are in tomorrow night, it's just a matter of coalition-building, a game that...