1:55 PM (IST): With Prime Minister David Cameron on the brink of a majority for another five years of Conservative government in the U.K, markets seemed buoyed by prospect of avoiding weeks of political wrangling for power.
Mark Dampier, head of investment research at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers, says that "business as usual might be the order of the day from this election result.
But markets are likely to be concerned over the next two years about the prospect of a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union.
HSBC economists Simon Wells and Liz Martins say a referendum on EU membership by end-2017 now seems much more likely.
1:25 PM (IST): Prime Minister David Cameron's office says he is going to Buckingham Palace later Friday to see Queen Elizabeth II.
Downing Street says that will take place at 5:00 PM (IST)
He is expected to tell her that he has enough support in Parliament to form a government.
1:15 PM (IST): Another big Labour figure has fallen in UK national elections, as the party's Treasury spokesman, Ed Balls, lost his seat in northern England to the Conservatives by 422 votes.
Had Labour won, Balls would have been finance minister.
He said that "any personal disappointment I have at this result is as nothing as compared to the sense of sorrow I have at the result Labour has achieved ... and the sense of concern I have about the future."
Balls said Britain faces "five years where questions will arise about the future of our union, about whether we can stay as a member of the European Union and fight for jobs and investment, whether we can make sure we secure our National Health Service at a time when public spending is cut."
1:05 PM (IST): British voters are reacting with surprise as they wake to the news that Prime Minister David Cameron may headed toward a Parliamentary majority. Polls have been showing a virtual dead heat in the race, and many expected weeks of wrangling over who would be in power.
Account manager Nicky Kelly-Lord, 38, is among those startled by the result. "I thought it would be closer," she says.
But some, like project manager Jonathan Heeley, 42, thought of it as inevitable that a country dealing with the wake of the 2008 financial crisis would be anxious to keep the economic recovery going. Heeley says, "the country's rebuilding itself and people want to stay with that, that's my opinion."
12:25 PM (IST): All night, famous political faces and household names in Britain had to stand on stages at vote counting centers to hear they had lost their seats in Parliament.
Douglas Alexander, who directed the opposition Labour's campaign and would have been Britain's foreign secretary if they had won, was defeated by a 20-year-old student from the Scottish National Party.
The Liberal Democrats suffered the worst, as almost their entire top team - many of them government ministers - was felled. Casualties included Business Secretary Vince Cable, chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, Energy Secretary Ed Davey and high-profile lawmakers Lynne Featherstone and Simon Hughes.
"This has been a terrible night for our party all over," Cable said. "But I am absolutely sure that we are going to bounce back."
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg kept his own seat but was meeting with colleagues Friday to figure out whether he will resign.
12:15 PM (IST): All seats in Scotland have been counted in Britain's latest vote, making clear the scale of the landslide by the Scottish National Party, which captured 56 of the region's 59 seats.
That was a gain of 50 seats over the nationalists' previous six seats in the 650-seat House of Commons.
The opposition Labour Party lost 40 seats in Scotland. The result left the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats with just one seat each in Scotland.
11:50 AM (IST): With 568 of 650 constituencies reporting results Friday morning in Britain's parliamentary election, the Conservatives were leading with 269 seats, according to election officials.
The opposition Labour Party has won 214 seats and the Scottish National Party 55. Eight seats have gone to the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland and to the Liberal Democrats, and the U.K. Independence Party has earned one seat. Thirteen seats went to other smaller parties.
An exit poll has predicted that the Conservatives will be the top party in Thursday's vote and the chief pollster says the Conservatives may even capture a majority of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
11:30 AM: With 508 of 650 constituencies reporting results Friday morning in Britain's parliamentary election, the Conservatives were leading with 222 seats, according to election officials.
The opposition Labour Party has won 203 seats and the Scottish National Party 55. Eight seats have gone to the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland, while the Liberal Democrats won six seats and the UK Independence Party earned one. Thirteen seats went to other smaller parties.
An exit poll has predicted that the Conservatives will be the top party in Thursday's vote, winning 316 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
11:10 AM (IST): Labour leader Ed Miliband has acknowledged that his party is facing likely defeat in Britain's general election.
He says "This has clearly been a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party."
Miliband won his own Doncaster North seat, but Labour looks set to win fewer than the 256 seats it held before the election. It has been all but wiped out in Scotland, a former stronghold, as voters defected in droves to the Scottish National Party.
Miliband said "we haven't made the gains that we'd wanted in England and Wales and in Scotland we have seen a surge of nationalism overwhelm our party."
He said whoever is prime minister in the next government would face the challenge of uniting Britain after a divisive campaign.
11:00 AM (IST): The two Indian candidates who have won in London have both doubled their victory margins from last time. Both are from Labour, and they did this when Labour itself is losing. Of the two Virendra Sharma has doubled the margin to a huge 19,000, and Seema Malhotra to 11,000.
10:55 AM (IST): George Galloway, one of Britain's most colorful and controversial figures, has lost his Bradford West seat to the Labour Party.
Galloway, an outspoken critic of Israel and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, won the seat from Labour in a 2012 special election. But some locals accused the left-wing firebrand - who once saluted Saddam Hussein and has appeared on a reality-TV show pretending to be a cat - of spending little time in Bradford, which has a large Muslim population.
The candidate from the tiny Respect Party lost by a wide margin to Labour's Naz Shah after a bitter campaign in the northern England city. Shah is a political newcomer who has overcome childhood poverty, a teenage forced marriage and the imprisonment of her mother for killing an abusive partner.
Shah had urged voters to reject Galloway because "we do not need a one-man Messiah to tell us how to come and fix up Bradford."
10:45 AM (IST): Prime Minister David Cameron has easily won his Witney seat in southern England, and stopped just short for declaring overall election victory for his Conservatives.
He told voters "this is clearly a very strong night for the Conservative Party."
Results seem to support an exit poll's prediction the Tories will be the biggest seat in the House of Commons and may even win a majority of seats.
A Conservative-led government would face a divided Britain, with the pro-independence Scottish National Party holding almost all the seats north of the border. Cameron has vowed to counter the rise of Scottish nationalism with more powers for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom.
He says "I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost - the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom."
10:10 AM (IST): Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg managed to hang on to his seat in Parliament when results were announced Friday morning, but admitted that his party had suffered a terrible string of setbacks in Britain's general election.
The party that had been the junior partner in a Conservative-led government lost most of its seats. An exit poll suggested it would win perhaps 10 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons - down from 56 - and several major party figures were ousted by voters.
After his own win, a woeful Clegg said "It is now painfully clear this has been a cruel and punishing night for the Liberal Democrats." Clegg, who has served as the UK's deputy prime minister for the last five years, hinted that he would be discussing his party leadership with colleges later Friday.
10:00 AM (IST): The UK Independence Party has won its first seat of the election, holding the eastern England constituency of Clacton.
The result was expected - Douglas Carswell was the town's lawmaker as a Conservative and was re-elected when he defected to UKIP last year.
The upstart party, which calls for Britain to leave the European Union and restrict immigration, had hoped to make an electoral breakthrough in this election. UKIP came a strong second or third in a number of constituencies but failed to win targeted seats.
Party leader Nigel Farage has said he will quit if he fails to win the seat of Thanet South.
9:30 AM (IST): He's back. London Mayor Boris Johnson has once again won a seat in parliament, this time representing voters in the Uxbridge and Ruislip South district, as Conservative Party candidates did much better than expected in Britain's election.
The shaggy-haired mayor, seen as a possible future Conservative Party leader, had previously represented Henley.
"The people of Britain, after a long and exhausting campaign, have finally spoken," he said early Friday. "They have decisively rejected any attempt to take this country back to the 1970s. They want us to go forward with the sensible, moderate policies that have led to a sustained economic recovery."
Johnson will do both jobs until voters choose a new London mayor in 2016.
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