British election delivers "hung parliament:" preliminary results

LONDON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The British general election resulted in a "hung parliament" as no party can win a clear majority, and the Conservative Party is set to become the largest party in the new parliament, preliminary results showed Friday.

Conservatives have won 291 seats so far, leaving them well short of the 326 members of Parliament party leader David Cameron needs to lead a majority government.

The BBC projected that Cameron's Conservatives will have 306 seats. If there are 10 Unionists elected in Northern Ireland then Cameron might be able to command 316 -- probably still slightly too few for him to be sure of winning a Queen's Speech.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband appeared to open the door for a Lib-Lab pact, dismissing Tory claims on office.

Under Britain's constitution, the sitting prime minister in a hung parliament makes the first attempt at forming a ruling coalition.

But according to the BBC figures, Labor and the Liberal Democrats together would have 317 seats, which even with three SDLP members of parliament would still leave them at 320 -- again a few votes short of a majority.

After sweeping to victory in his Witney constituency, Cameron said: "We have to wait for the full results, but it is clear the Labour government has lost its mandate to govern this country."

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Submitted by Sullivan on Fri, 2010-05-07 19:37

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