EDINBURGH, May 8 — Scottish nationalists could take nearly every seat in Scotland but be shut out of any role in the British government, according to an exit poll after voting ended in Britain's national election yesterday.
The poll for national television stations showed the Scottish National Party (SNP) taking 58 out of the 59 parliamentary seats north of the border.
But Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives were on course to win the most seats in parliament with 316, just shy of an outright majority, with Ed Miliband's Labour Party trailing on 239.
If confirmed, such an outcome would deny the SNP the kingmaker role it had sought in the House of Commons and kill off the prospect of a leftist alliance with Labour to force Cameron out of office.
But it would dramatically highlight the political divide between England and Scotland, and could bolster Scots to push for a new referendum on independence, having narrowly lost one last year.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, widely judged to be the star performer of the election campaign even though she was not running for a seat in the London parliament, was wary of the projection.
“I'd treat the exit poll with HUGE caution,” she tweeted. “I'm hoping for a good night but I think 58 seats is unlikely!”
The left-of-centre SNP had offered during the campaign to work with Labour in order to shut out the Conservatives and reverse austerity policies. Labour leader Miliband had ruled out a coalition, insisting he could win an outright majority.
The SNP's surge comes just eight months after the independence vote in which Scots narrowly rejected its call to break away from the United Kingdom.
Since then, however, many Scots have become disillusioned with Labour, which has traditionally been strong in Scotland, seeing it as having moved too far away from the left and closer to Conservative thinking. Some in Scotland deride Labour as “Red Tories.”
Promises to devolve more power to Scotland have also gone unfulfilled, leading to a sense of betrayal.
Labour is at risk of some embarrassing defeats in Scotland. These could include Douglas Alexander, a Labour party grandee and shadow foreign secretary, who is in danger of losing his seat to a 20-year-old university student, Mhairi Black.
Labour faces other close battles in Renfrewshire East, where its Scottish leader Jim Murphy is standing, and in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, once the stronghold of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Sturgeon — described by detractors as “the most dangerous woman in Britain” but whom polls show as the most popular politician in the country — has stressed that this election is not, for the SNP, about independence.
“Even if...the SNP wins every seat in Scotland, that is not a mandate for independence or a second referendum. This election is not about independence,” she said on Wednesday.
But her opponents said the SNP's aim was undoubtedly to push for a second referendum. Cameron's Conservatives had described the prospect of Labour and the SNP running Britain as a recipe for chaos and the potential break-up of the UK.
Not all SNP voters are automatically pro-independence, however, and polls show that the sentiment on that issue has not changed much since the referendum.
One factor that could come into play is Cameron's promise to hold a vote by 2017 on whether Britain should leave the European Union, something Sturgeon has said would be against Scotland's wishes. — Reuters