But I think you said that 5 years ago, Beast. There is never a good time to be leader of the Opposition.

What about the Glasgow pensioner who bet 30 grand on a Tory win? He is a rich man today!

The question you should ask is what is the point of Labour. If it's just to put a Tory clone like Blair in power then why bother? You need to come up with a genuinely different agenda IMO. 

Hodges is a turd with a personal agenda against Ed. However, David would still have lost.

As I have said, governments dont get booted out after one term unless they have f*cked up the economy. When we went back into recession in 2012, I thought they had,  but then they got lucky with circumstances - consumer spending and house price boom etc. The problems that led to the 2008 crash are still there and will blow up again soon and government spending actually went up in the last Parilament! THere was very little real Austerity. The Tories have deferred all the problems and difficult decisions until the second term.

Apart from Smith and then Blair in the last days of the previous Tory government

Well, we have to do something to keep our chins up. The Tories want us to sink into depair and give up so they can have a one party state with Murdoch and other media barons brainwashing the plebs, North Korean style

We need a strong oppostion to hold this government to account. The media are not going to do it

The Labour Opposition is in complete disarray, but don't worry Beast, the real Opposition in the coming years will come from behind Cameron.

Its possible Labour could end up like Pasok in Greece, with the radical left wing Syriza style party emerging and replacing it. But I think radicalism doesnt work in England. It may work in Scotland, but not here

Labour needs to hold its nerve and try and stick to the Centre otherwise it will never win in England. Burnham, "Boring" Rachel or Chuka will be acceptable. But Rachel is having baby so perhaps she wont put herself forward

My initial feelings are that I'm gutted at the result & fearful for the next five years.

Whilst having absolutely no appetite for a Labour win, I was hoping for a coalition where Labour needed to make concessions to those parties to left of them.

However, I feel Milliband fell between two stools. On the one hand, he made some nominal, small-scale leftist gestures, which were proclaimed by the right-wing media as him showing he's some kind of crypto-communist. This, along with the constant scare-story of 'Labour can't be trusted with the economy' (when governments have negligible control over it anyway) was used to great effect by the Tories & their supporters to induce fear amongst the electorate.

On the other hand, proper leftists could see Labour were still, overall, a centre-right supporter of the cancerous corporate-capitalism culture, so he didn't win enough support from the disaffected left. The Green Party, who adopted a radical-left platform, saw their vote massively up.

Not got the time nor inclination to go through all the ponderings I've had, but a few other things stick out:

1) UKIP either haven't made anywhere near the expected gains against the Tories, or they have made expected gains and the Tories have gained massively from elsewhere to more than compensate. Probably a combination of the two, along with UKIP actually taking votes direct from Labour (people who obviously don't know any UKIP policy other than the EU/Immigration question)

2) Similarly, the huge numbers of disaffected Lib Dems look, on the face of it, to have jumped to the Tories. Whilst I think that in LD-Tory contests, many former Tory voters who switched to the LD's in the late 80's & the 90's returned to Tory with the post-coalition notion of "what's the difference? I might as well vote Tory", the LD to Tory swing in Labour seats is more complex & puzzling, and suggests to me at least that Labour may have leaked support to the Tories, which is worrying for Labour

Finally, there seems to be an agenda being played out in the media, by pundits, politicians & commentators, regarding the reasons behind the result. They're saying that Labour didn't gain enough in England because they were too left; but in Scotland they're stating the reason is down to a rise in nationalism - whereas I believe the SNP's surge in support is more down to their 'progressive left' message.

One point to ponder - Labour suffered carnage in Scotland, but the SNP can quickly counter any who argue that they destroyed the prospects of a Labour government, since even if all the seats won by the SNP had been won by Labour instead, they would still fall short by a wide margin - add the tallies and you get a total of: 288.

If Labour + SNP = majority, then it would be fair to say the SNP had deprived Labour of a majority Government.

Yet all the commentators I listened too after it came out, were pooh poohing it.

Ashdown said he would eat his hat and Campbell said he would eat his kilt. The Radio 4 presenters were torturing themselves about how Labour could still get into Government.

All so much wasted breath - the exit poll was incredibly close to the actual outcome.

The big factor for the Tories was the Liberal Democrat collapse as Saint alluded to. All the commentators believed the LD collapse would only benefit Labour, whereas in practice it benefitted the Conservatives far more - now that is unexpected and something to ponder.

Depends where you live and what area of public spending you're talking about.

Over half a millions public sector jobs have been lost since 2010.

Local Authorities in [mainly] the northern half of the country have had to contend with genuinely crippling cuts to central grants.

The Police & Fire Service have suffered massive cuts to budgets.

However, as you say, the scale of cuts is scheduled to accelerate in the 2015-18 period. If they focus on the areas they've already carved way past the bone, then this will cause collapse of key services. I've already seen that the central grant cuts scheduled to be imposed on Liverpool & Manchester (and a whole host of northern towns & cities) will actually take the total income below the level required just to perform the statutory functions.

Cameron (or was it Osborne? I can't recall) spoke today of being inclusive of all the UK. Bullsh*t. In practice, even with the Lib Dem rent-boys, they've deliberately targeted the worst of the cuts on areas of the country who don't vote Tory anyway.

The key question is what we're left with after a 'scorched earth' policy. My fear is that public services are run-down to such a level that the general public will be desperate for anything to improve the service offering, and be more compliant to having more and more placed into the hands of private operators who, ultimately, don't improve the overall service offering - but a bunch of spivish c*nts erode the pay/T&C's/work conditions of employees in order to free-up cash to pocket in the form of profit.

A transfer of wealth from the masses to the capital-owning 'elite'. It's the central Tory tenet.

Another point to ponder - the conservatives had their best results in Wales since 1983 - nobody expected that:

The election has been a "game-changer" for the Conservative Party in Wales, a newly elected MP has said.

Craig Williams, who won the hotly-contested Cardiff North seat, said the Tories were "here to stay" as they won 11 seats.

The party took Gower from Labour by 27 votes, a seat it had held for more than 100 years.

The Tories also gained Brecon and Radnorshire from the Lib Dems and Vale of Clwyd from Labour.

Hmm, so that's why we didn't see the shy kipper emergence. I guess instead we saw a 'lazy voter' emergence*. *No offence intended by that comment, I just couldn't think of a better way of putting it. 

Ive been at work since 5am and have only just seen the results.

Unbelievable and am mighty relieved we are going to have 5 years of stable government,an eu referendum and the necessary steps taken to at least severely reduce if not eliminate the defecit.

The electorate have chosen stability over chaos! and made bloody sure we can`t be held to ransom by a party not even on the ballot paper.

A great result and a brighter future awaits.

Much more accurate than the conventional polling, but still out by some way.

The Exit Poll suggested a hung parliament, and the first hour of the BBC's broadcast saw interviews with various Conservative politicians (May, Boris, Gove) asking them who they would be dealing with to form a majority. In the event, they have a majority of 12.

Exit Poll Errors (actual result in brackets)
Con 316 (331) +15
Lab 239 (232) -7
LD 10 (8) -2
UKIP 2 (1) -1
Green 2 (1) -1
SNP 58 (56) -2
PC 4 (3) -1
Respect 1 (0) -1

So the exit poll understated the Conservatives, and overstated all other parties. Did some shy Tories even lie in the secret ballot used by the exit poll?

This is my fear too. That and obviously fracking will now continue apace, the 'green crap' will be ignored, and we have to expect at least one or two laws passed by the lunatic fringe in return for keeping the slim majority stable.

He's retreated to his litter tray to lick his wounds. And his ar$e.

Apparently in his speech, he blamed the vile, venal, racists, Zionists and hyenas for his defeat.

I'm not opposed to fracking per se. I just despair that we're going to make the same mistake we did with NSO - ie, not utilising it as a national strategic resource, to assist the ideal of energy security. Instead, it will be left in the hands of private corporations, there'll be a race to frack it out ASAP, sell it on the international markets, and most of the profit will flow into the already bulging pockets of oil & gas company shareholders & executives.

Personally, I'd use fracked gas to subvert the entire UK energy market, selling it to customers at cost price, and also setting up electricity generating companies who would also receive fracked gas at a fraction of the 'market' price, who'd then retail the cheaply-produced electricity to the general public at cost price.

F*ck-over the profiteering b*stards of the energy supply sindustry.

According to the BBC, the Lib Dems have lost £169,000 in deposits in this election, compared to £0 in 2010.

Yep and Labour lost £300000 to that pillock Axelrod and about £30000 on a stone ornament for Downing Street.

Its been an odd election, the results says a tiny majority but it feels like a landslide considering how many lost their seats.

Part of me thinks "Good, you deserve it, you bunch of rent boys".

Another part wishes they were right now in discussions to form another coalition