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Play Video Reuters UK leaders make final appeal Related Quotes Symbol Price Change ^DJI 10,520.32 -347.80 ^GSPC 1,128.15 -37.72 ^IXIC 2,319.64 -82.65
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AP The leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown, left, and his wife Sarah, right, are seen arriving to the
By PAISLEY DODDS and DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds And David Stringer, Associated Press Writers 24 mins ago
LONDON British Prime Minister Gordon Brown indicated Friday he might try to form a coalition government, seeking to keep his Labour Party in power following an election in which the opposition Conservatives were projected to win the most seats but not gain a majority in Parliament.
But Conservative leader David Cameron whose party was projected to snatch over 90 seats from Labour and produce its best showing in 80 years insisted that voters in Britain's national election Thursday did not want Labour to remain at the helm of the government.
"I believe it is already clear that the Labour government has lost its mandate to goven our country," Cameron said Friday in Witney, west of London. "Our country wants change. That change is going to require new leadership."
The exit polls reflected deep uncertainty over who will form the next government, prompting the country's top three parties the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats to immediately began jockeying to form alliances.
Turnout for Thursday's vote appeared to be high but hundreds of people across the country were prevented from voting when polls closed at 10 p.m. The head of Britain's Electoral Commission said legal challenges to some ballot results were likely from those turned away.
Police had to go to one polling station in east London after 50 angry residents who were denied the chance to vote staged a sit-in protest. Voters in Sheffield, Newcastle and elsewhere in London also complained that they had been blocked from voting.
An analysis by Britain's main television stations suggested the Conservatives will win 305 of the 650 House of Commons seats, short of the 326 seats needed for a majority. Labour was seen winning 255 seats and the Liberal Democrats 61, far less than had been expected after their support surged during the campaign.
Political wrangling and a period of uncertainty appear ahead for one of the world's largest economies a prospect that could unsettle global markets already reeling from the Greek debt crisis and fears of wider debt contagion in Europe.
Britain's budget deficit is set to eclipse even that of Greece next year, and whoever winds up in power faces the daunting challenge of introducing big budget cuts to slash the country's huge deficit.
In London, bond trading started in the middle of the night six hours earlier than normal as traders tried to capitalize on early forecasts.
Speaking in his home district in Scotland, Brown vowed to "play my part in Britain having a strong, stable and principled government" the clearest sign yet that he would try to cling to power and seek an alliance with the third-place Liberal Democrats. Brown also pledged action on election reform a key demand of his would-be partners.
Cameron acknowledged there may be negotiations ahead to determine which party, or parties, will form the next government. "What will guide me will be out national interest," he said.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said, given the election results, Labour and the Liberal Democrats were "honor bound" to talk to each other.
"Of course we can talk to each other to see if there is common ground," Miliband said.
The television projections showed the Labor Party with its smallest number of seats since 1987. The Conservatives, widely known as the Tories, appeared to gain 95 seats, all but one at the expense of Labour.
Official results early Friday showed the Conservatives overtaking Labour in the number of seats won, 130-112, according to broadcaster ITN.
Conservative leaders were adamant that the results meant Brown must go but senior Labour figures lost no time in reaching out to the Liberal Democrats in hopes of blocking Cameron.
"No way this man, who has failed this electoral task, can contemplate forming a government," Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles said.
Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, also Labour's election chief, noted that in a "hung parliament" one in which no party has a clear majority the sitting prime minister is traditionally given the first chance to form a government.
In an apparent opening pitch to the Liberal Democrats ahead of coalition talks, Mandelson backed their call for an end to the existing system in which the number of districts won not the popular vote determines who leads the country.
"There has to be electoral reform as a result of this election," Mandelson said. The current system, he said, "is on its last legs."
The biggest surprise of the night was the apparently poor performance of the upstart Liberal Democrats, whose telegenic leader Nick Clegg had shot to prominence on the back of stellar debate performances and had been expected to play the role of kingmaker. Instead of breaking out of perennial third-party status with strong gains, the party was projected to remain about even with earlier results.
Robert Worcester, an analyst for pollster IPSOS Mori, said the Liberal Democrats' poor showing could be attributed to a low turnout by their supporters. "They said they would vote and they didn't," he said.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Vince Cable described the exit poll as "very strange" and insisted projections based on them had been "horribly wrong" in the past.
Projecting elections based on exit polls is risky particularly in an exceptionally close election like this one. Polls are based on samples in this case 18,000 respondents and always have some margin of error.
In addition, thousands have also already cast postal ballots but those results don't factor into the exit polls. About 12 percent cast postal ballots in 2005.
Political experts say the Conservatives need a nationwide swing in their favor of about 7 percent to clinch a majority. Though the Tories made inroads of closer to 9 percent in some districts, in others they scored swings of 5 percent or less.
Still, Cameron appears to have a considerable chance of return the party of rightwing icon Margaret Thatcher to power after 13 years in the political wilderness even though he may have to seek deals with Irish nationalists or others.
In theory, a majority requires 326 seats. However, in practice Cameron could govern as a minority government with a dozen or so fewer because of ad hoc alliances he could form for key votes, and the fact that some parties would be unlikely to join a discredited Labour camp.
The Conservatives were ousted by Labour under Tony Blair in 1997, after 19 years in power. Three leaders and three successive election defeats later, the party selected Cameron, a fresh-faced, bicycle-riding graduate of Eton and Oxford who promised to modernize its fusty, right-wing image.
Under Brown, who took over from Blair three years ago, Britain's once high-flying economy, rooted in world-leading financial services, has run into hard times.
Still, Brown's Labour won the northern England seat of Rochdale where the prime minister last week made the biggest gaffe of the campaign, caught on an open microphone referring to an elderly voter as a "bigoted woman" after she buttonholed him on immigration. Brown was later forced to visit her home to apologize.
Despite the uncertainty, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a known supporter of Cameron said on his Twitter feed he'd already called the Tory leader to congratulate him. "Even though results aren't in we know the Conservatives had a great day," Schwarzenegger wrote.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100507/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_election
