British Election Results

The final result gives Blair a majority of 64 seats, down from over 160 in the previous parliament. For those Labour supporters in Britain who are hoping for a leadership change, this is probably the ideal result - Labour back in with a reasonable majority, but enough of a set back to destabilise Blair's leadership.

A slightly bigger swing to the Tories across a number of electorates could have made the result even more problematic for Blair. A friend of mine has closely analysed the result, and discovered that 17 Labour electorates were won by 1.5% or less. Had these seats moved to the Tories just a little more, Labour would have been faced with a majority of only around 30. Given internal dissension over several major issues, this would have left Blair struggling to build majorities in the House.

Anyway, that didn't happen, and instead Britain has, for the first time, elected a Labour government over three consecutive elections. Congratulations to Labour colleagues in Britain.

On checking the full resuls on the excellent BBC election website it would seem that the south-western seat of Totnes, where a Lib-Dem correspondent to this site is based, was very narrowly held by the Tory incumbent. Better luck next time :-)