Hey, remember all that stuff about the UK election being really close?  Yeah, it wasn’t.  The Conservative Party is running away with the biggest share of seats, although maybe not enough to declare a clear majority and form a government on its own.  The big stories are the losers.

Labour will drop from 256 seats in Commons to around 239.  The Scottish National Party (SNP) got six seats in 2010, and goes up to 54 to 56 seats this time around.  The Conservatives might wind up just shy of the magic number of 326 that would control Parliament – either way, Prime Minister David Cameron keeps his job.  The Lib-Dems were decimated, losing 46 seats and winding up with around ten.

There’s already talk of Ed Miliband having to step down as the leader of Labour, after being wiped out in Scotland, and failing to take seats from the Tories.  Scottish voters turned away from Labour, perhaps feeling a bit taken-for-granted by Labour’s quick embrace of the Conservative “Better Together” campaign during the Scottish independence drive.

The SNP swept Scotland in a landslide.  A country that considers itself politically more in tune with the Social Democracies of northern Europe than with Tory Blue London showed no mercy to Labour.  Even a 20-year old politics student named Mhairi Black was able to take Paisley and Renfrewshire South near Glasgow from Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election chief and a former Cabinet minister.

“I pledge to use this voice not just to improve Scotland, but to pursue progressive politics for the benefit of people across the UK,” said Ms. Black, now the UK’s youngest MP in 350 years.

The only significant gains made by Labour were taken from the Lib-Dems, punished for entering into the coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 and failing to stop miserly Tory austerity policies.  Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg kept his seat, but only because of tactical voting by conservatives to abandon their own to save their coalition partner. 

In his acceptance speech, Clegg said he will be “seeking to make further remarks” about the election, “and my position in the Liberal Democrats” – leading to speculation he may step down from his party’s leadership as well.  Senior Lib-Dem MPs looking at the ends of their political careers blamed the Tories for running a negative election campaign that raised alarms over the Union if a Labour-SNP coalition won.

The xenophobic UK Independence Party (Ukip) failed to live up to all of the publicity it got over the past couple of years, and is projected to take only two seats, equal to the Greens.  Ukip leader Nigel Farage disappeared from in front of the cameras early on, retiring early after failing to win South Thanet.

London Mayor Boris Johnson apparently will keep his day job, and serve as MP for Uxbridge and Ruislip South.  Controversial Leftist George Galloway lost Bradford West to Labour’s Naz Shah.  It was a stunningly dirty campaign, with Galloway’s supporters accused of beating up a Jewish journalist, smearing Shah’s reputation, and leaving a dead crow on her doorstep.