United Kingdom voters gave their first verdict on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the opposition Labour Party, with early results suggesting it sustained losses across England and in elections to the Scottish Parliament.
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But Labour did enjoy a rare gain from the SNP in Edinburgh Southern, where Daniel Johnson won the seat for the party.
While the final results of Thursday’s regional polls have yet to be announced, “what is now beyond doubt is that the SNP has won a third consecutive Scottish Parliament election”, Sturgeon said, adding: “We have tonight made history”.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage insisted the growth in his party’s vote “is coming more from Labour than it is from anybody else”.
He joined the Scottish Conservatives in 2012 after being inspired by the leadership of Ruth Davidson.
Matthew Ashton, a politics expert at Nottingham Trent University, said the SNP’s inability to gain a majority may be “evidence that their hold on power is beginning to slip”.
While Labour supporters will be licking their wounds after losing some individual seats they will also be consoling themselves that it could have been worse and take fresh heart from a number of results.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, whose party topped Scottish polls for the third time in succession, said Labour had suffered “quite staggering” losses in Scotland, which Mr Corbyn identified as a top priority shortly after winning the leadership in September.
David Mundell said it would be ” good for Scotland, good for the Scottish Parliament” to have the Tories as the official party of opposition.
In Scotland, the separatist and pro-EU SNP won 58 out of 73 constituency seats, three more than at the last election in 2011. The Tories also gained Aberdeen West from the SNP as well as their success in Dumfriesshire.
Labour lawmaker Sadiq Khan, a former government minister and son of a bus driver from Pakistan, is tipped to beat Conservative multimillionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith in the race to run the British capital.
Results were expected overnight in elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, dozens of English councils, the mayor of Salford and parliamentary by-elections in the safe Labour seats of Sheffield Brightside and Ogmore in South Wales.
Green co-convener Patrick Harvie was elected in Glasgow, while the party now has two MSPs from the Lothian region.
“But I understand the seriousness of the task ahead”.
“We should have been winning by a landslide across the country with the way this Tory (Conservative) government’s been acting and the way they’ve deal with the country”, Labour lawmaker John Mann told the BBC.
He added: “She is a leader who will stand up to the SNP and give Scotland strong opposition”.
In the city itself the Unionist parties have won 61.1 per cent of the vote – sending a strong message to Nicola Sturgeon as she contemplates how to act as the First Minister.
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“I’ll have to go meet colleagues, we’re all on stand-by so not too much celebrating just now we’re ready to leap into action and the work starts tomorrow”.
