General Election 2015: the winners and losers

We have a surprise Conservative 12-seat majority, as the Tories swept across England, while Scotland saw a landslide victory for the SNP, Wales remained majority Labour and Northern Ireland's DUP defended their share of the seats. The Liberal Democrats suffered a catastrophic election result across the United Kingdom, and UKIP only have one seat despite winning nearly 4 million votes.

The Conservatives increased their share of the vote by 0.8%, while Labour won 1.5% more votes and the SNP surge resulted in 3.1% more votes amongst all of them in the UK. The Lib ems lost 15.2% of their votes. It is incredibly rare for governments to increase their parliamentary representation after re-election. No one was expecting this kind of result.

The final tally:

Conservatives - 331 seats (12-seat majority) with 36.9% of the vote across the UK

Labour - 232 (30.4%)

Scottish National Party - 56 (4.7%)

Liberal Democrats - 8 (7.9%)

Democratic Unionist party - 8 (0.6%)

Sinn Fein - 4 (0.6%)

Plaid Cymru - 3 (0.6%)

Social Democrat & Labour Party - 3 (0.3%)

Ulster Unionist Party - 2 (0.4%)

UKIP - 1 (12.6%)

Green Party - 1 (3.8%)

Independent - 1

The turnout was 66.1%, a modest improvement on 2010's 65.1% across the UK

This election was a big one. The stakes were incredibly high; with the size of the state, the union of the United Kingdom and our position in the European Union on the ballot, and with the added nuanced policy debates around the NHS, immigration, housing, our nuclear defenses, the continuation of austerity and political reform, there was certainly something for everyone to sink their teeth into.

But for all the impact that the results will have, you would be forgiven for thinking this was a pretty standard issue election. All the parties ran remarkably risk averse, sterilised and sometimes downright dull election campaigns, with no real stand-out moments. And to top it all off, after all the sound and fury, the polls didn’t seem to budge after more than a month of campaigning, much to the annoyance of journalists looking for a headline.

The Conservatives were edging it in the polls for the last few weeks of the campaign, during which time the various party leaders universally opted for a very stage-managed appeal to voters through the media, with virtually no walkabouts among the general public and a great deal of backroom spin.

Immediately after the polls closed at 10pm, the exit poll indicated a huge surge for the Conservatives. The prediction stood at: Conservatives - 316, Labour - 239, SNP - 58, Liberal Democrats - 10, Plaid Cymru - 4, Greens - 2, UKIP - 2, Other - 19. If this was the case, all the polls leading up to the election were seriously off.

Soon after the results for each of the 650 seats started trickling in, and it didn’t take long for Labour to suffer a crushing blow. Labour’s election campaign chief, and shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander lost to a 20 year old SNP candidate, shortly followed by the fall of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy. To add huge insult to injury, the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, who would have become the second most powerful man in a Labour government, lost his Morley and Outwood seat. His wife, Yvette Cooper, won her nearby constituency.

Nick Clegg retained his seat in Sheffield Hallam, but in a shock result Vince Cable, who was the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015, lost his Twickenham seat to the Conservatives. Former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy was defeated by the SNP up in Scotland, while Danny Alexander, who had been Chief Secretary to the Treasury since 2010, was also defeated for re-election at the hands of the Scottish Nationalists.

The Liberal Democrat minister David Laws lost his seat to the Conservatives, leaving just eight Liberal Democrats in parliament. Ed Davey, also a minister in the last cabinet as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, didn’t manage to retain his Kingston and Surbiton seat.

Boris Johnson is back in parliament. He is widely tipped to take over from David Cameron over the course of the next parliament, possibly taking over as prime minister as soon as 2017 (after the promised EU referendum).

Esther McVey, who served as Minister of State for Employment since 2013, stands out as one of the very few surprise losers in the Conservative party. She lost to Labour by just 400 votes in Wirral West.

George Galloway of the Respect Party lost to Labour in Bradford West, ending a parliamentary career spanning four decades.

Later on in the day, we saw Nigel Farage fall short of a win in South Thanet by some 3,000 votes to the Conservatives. As promised, he has resigned as UKIP leader.

Both Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have resigned as leaders of their party, following a truly remarkable election that no one was predicting.

Leadership elections will soon take place for both parties with the former Care minister Norman Lamb and former President of the Lib Dems Tim Farron looking like the two most likely candidates for the Liberal Democrats. Options are understandably rather more limited after the party lost a staggering 49 of their 57 MPs.

Labour's leadership election is comparably more open, with candidates including the interim leader Harriet Harman, Shadow Health secretary Andy Burnham and Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna.

90 MPs have stepped down at this election, including prominent political heavyweights such as William Hague, Andrew Lansley, Brooks Newmark and Malcolm Rifkind for the Conservatives, while Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw and David Blunkett all step away from frontline politics for good. Former leader of the Liberal Democrats Menzies Campbell will also be out of Parliament.