Ed Miliband resigns after worst Labour election result since 1987
Source: ft.com
Editor's comment: Finally some good news!
Ed Miliband stepped down as Labour leader on Friday after the party's worst general election defeat since Margaret Thatcher's final victory in 1987.
"This is not a speech I wanted to make," he said in a Westminster hall just after noon on Friday. "I take absolute and total responsibility for the result."
The resignation came just hours after shadow chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat in a stunning upset that encapsulated a disastrous set of results for the party.
Labour figures appeared shell-shocked as the results began to come in on Thursday night, showing only a handful of wins — and the loss of almost all the party’s Scottish MPs.
Speaking at the count in his seat of Doncaster North, Mr Miliband said it had been a “very disappointing and difficult” night for his party.
He returned swiftly to London in the early hours and spoke to staff —some tearful — at the party’s headquarters in Brewers Green, Victoria. Soon afterwards he went to 1 Great George Street to give his resignation speech to the television cameras.
Labour won just 232 parliamentary seats, 25 less than it achieved at the last general election under Gordon Brown’s leadership.
In the space of just hours it lost its three most senior personnel: Mr Miliband, Mr Balls and Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary, who lost his seat in Scotland.
Mr Balls stood with a fixed, distant expression as the result was announced in his Morley and Outwood constituency in West Yorkshire, where he lost to the Conservatives by 422 votes. He said his personal disappointment was “as nothing” compared with the sorrow he felt at the national result.
It was not long before introspection descended over the cause of the party’s failure.
Lord Reid, a Blairite former cabinet minister, said it had been an “awful drubbing” as a consequence of the party shifting too far to the left. “We were on the wrong side of all the arguments: on economic competence, creating wealth, reforming public services,” he said.
Read the rest at: ft.com
