(MENAFN- The Peninsula) British Prime Minister David Cameron swept to a stunning election victory yesterday, confounding forecasts that the vote would be the closest in decades and winning a clear majority that left his Labour opponents in tatters.
Analysts say Cameron sealed a surprise election win by persuading Britons to choose the security of modestly rising living standards over an implausible pretender many feared could become the puppet of Scottish nationalists.
The sterling currency, bonds and shares surged on a result that reversed expectations of an inconclusive "hung parliament", in which Cameron would have had to jockey for power with Labour rival Ed Miliband. Instead, Cameron met Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace to accept a mandate to form the first majority Conservative government since John Major's surprise victory in 1992. The scale of his triumph surpassed his party's most optimistic projections. "This is the sweetest victory of all," Cameron, 48, told enthusiastic supporters at party headquarters.
Smiling beside his wife Samantha, he returned to the prime minister's office in Downing Street after meeting the queen. Staff lined up to applaud when he entered the residence. Cameron's pitch to voters was that he had rescued Britain from economic crisis to deliver the fastest growth among major economies.
He had warned that Labour's Miliband would cripple the UK by giving Scottish nationalists the keys to England's treasure.
In early appointments to his cabinet, he retained George Osborne as finance minister, sticking with the man credited with overseeing recovery from the economic crash, and reappointed his foreign, interior and defence ministers.
With all results declared in the 650-seat house, the Conservatives held 331 and Labour 232. The Liberal Democrats, who supported Cameron in government since 2010, were all but wiped out, reduced to eight seats from 57. Scottish nationalists won 56 of the 59 Scottish seats, up from just six.
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