Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon acknowledges her supporters after winning her seat at a counting centre in Glasgow. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) won its first seats in the assembly, a total of seven.
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The Green Party won six seats and the Liberal Democrats won five.
During the election campaign, Scottish Green co-convener Patrick Harvie said a petition signed by as few as 100,000 people could trigger another referendum.
Willie Rennie of the Lib Dems said opposition to the SNP needed to be “far wider than a narrow Tory agenda”, and added there was “no indication” the Conservatives would push for the investment in education.
Her announcement came as Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson – fresh from her party more than doubling its numbers at Holyrood – called for the SNP leader to start the new parliament by ruling out another independence referendum.
Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones has distanced himself from Corbyn and repositioned the Welsh party rightwards.
“The result is that the Scottish Government will be weaker and the Parliament stronger”, he said.
It was an emotional night in Hastings coming nearly a year after the death of then council leader Jeremy Birch, who collapsed while out on the election campaign trail.
She pledged to “govern with conviction and determination, but also with humility and a willingness to listen and to learn from the ideas of others”. “But our aim is to persuade, not to divide”, said Sturgeon. We will hold the Government to account and hold them responsible for the decisions they make.
An SNP spokesman said: “Parliament will decide all of these issues in a consensual, democratic way, as it always has done”.
But Bermondsey & Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle told BBC2’s Newsnight that the party should be gaining seats across the country at this stage in the Parliament in order to have a chance of returning to power at the general election.
“In the last budget round talks they never even bothered to invite us in where in previous years they had made the effort”. And he said Ukip was “really biting hard” into Labour’s vote. That’s off the table.
Mr Cameron is also grappling with deep splits in his party ahead of the June 23 referendum on Britain’s European Union membership.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I was the deputy first minister in a minority government from 2007 to 2011”.
“As a minority administration, I believe the SNP will be forced to listen, to learn and to improve”.
Ms Davidson said the 2014 Scottish independence referendum had helped break down traditional party tribalism in Scotland, making the Tories a legitimate option for Unionists again.
The fact that the SNP, against all predictions, failed to win a majority, and that Labour found itself playing third fiddle in Holyrood, shows clearly that the Scots wanted clarity of principle.
“At the same time, Ruth Davidson and Labour need to respect the verdict of voters across Scotland, who have handed the SNP an overwhelming victory at this election and with it a clear mandate from the public to deliver on our manifesto commitments”.
Nicola, you’ve democratically won three elections in a row and the majority of us, with regret, accept that.
“We will keep standing for our belief that we can choose to be better than this”. Despite the disappointment of the final results, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens stood with us.
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Fathers’ rights activist Bobby Smith got 58 votes for the Give Me Back Elmo party.
