The Conservatives won most seats in a landmark general election but Britain was left Friday with a hung parliament as the party failed to land a knock out blow against Labour prime minister Gordon Brown.
Plunged into the kind of political uncertainty the country has not experienced since 1974. Conservative leader David Cameron insisted his centre-left rival had lost his mandate to govern.
But the prime minister’s key allies indicated Labour, which has ruled since 1997, would try to cling to power by seeking a deal with the centrist Liberal Democrats.Movie Carol (2015)
With 35 of the 650 seats still to be counted, the Conservatives had 290 lawmakers compared to 247 for Labour, meaning it was impossible for the Tories to win the 326 seats they need to govern alone in the House of Commons.
The Liberal Democrats had just 51 — a disaster for the third party after what had seemed a strong campaign.
Brown’s de facto deputy Peter Mandelson said Labour would “obviously” be prepared to consider an alliance with the Liberal Democrats that would allow it to remain in power for a fourth term.
“Obviously we would be prepared to consider that,” Mandelson told Sky News cialis livraison rapide pas cher.
He also hinted at offering to meet a key Liberal Democrat demand to change the country’s first-past-the-post voting system, saying it was “on its last legs”.
But Mandelson poured scorn on suggestions that Brown should stand down. “I think that would be rather a surprising thing to happen… I don’t think it would help matters if he were suddenly to stand aside,” he said. Another senior cabinet minister, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, said he believed Brown would try to form a “progressive majority” with the Liberal Democrats, stressing it was his constitutional right to try to do so.
But senior Conservative figure Michael Gove told BBC radio a pact between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would be “a coalition of the defeated”.