Election news: Tony Blair delivered a historic third term for Labour yesterday but with the lowest share of the vote for a governing party since the Great Reform Act of 1832.
A night of real election drama saw Mr Blair's Commons majority slashed, to instantly revive questions about his tenure in 10 Downing Street.
As a sombre and unsmiling Prime Minister returned from Buckingham Palace to form a new government, Conservative leader Michael Howard surprised Westminster by announcing that he would stand down as soon as his party agreed the rules by which to elect his successor. Mr Howard claimed he had put his party on course for recovery at the next election but said that, at 63, he was too old to again attempt to lead it back to government.
Meanwhile Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy hailed the arrival of genuine "three party politics" in Britain as his party celebrated its best performance for years, with nearly 23 per cent of the vote and an estimated 60 seats.
However - with Labour suffering massive defections in a tide of anti-war, anti-Blair sentiment - many Lib Dem MPs will be disappointed that Mr Kennedy failed to see this convert into a more significant advance on the party's 52 seat tally of 2001. Mr Kennedy said during the election campaign it was his firm intention to lead the Lib Dems into the next election in four or five years time, although he had a faltering start to this campaign when he appeared not to have the detail of one of his party's key economic policies.
One other apparent casualty of election night was Mr Blair's appointed election supremo Alan Milburn. As the first results were being declared Mr Milburn announced that he had informed Mr Blair he did not wish to remain in frontline politics with a job in the new cabinet.
In Scotland, where Labour lost five seats, Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond was jubilant as he achieved his target and matched his party's previous best tally of six Westminster seats. The Conservatives were again left with just one seat in Scotland, although they saw the first signs of a revival in Wales where Plaid Cymru went down from four to three seats.
The most spectacular result there came in Blaenau Gwent, Labour's safest seat in the country, and once home to Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot. Independent Peter Law over-turned a Labour majority of over 19,000 to take the seat after resigning from the Labour Party in protest against its imposition of an all-woman shortlist.
The Conservatives began re-establishing themselves in London with significant wins in key marginals in Putney and Wimbledon. The capital also provided some of the truly symbolic results of the night. The Conservatives regained Enfield Southgate from schools minister Stephen Twigg, who famously defeated former Tory minister Michael Portillo on the night of Mr Blair's first landslide victory in 1997.
In Bethnal Green & Bow, meanwhile, the Respect Party's George Galloway swept aside Labour's 10,000 majority to defeat Blair loyalist Oona King in the night's most powerful Muslim backlash against the Iraq war. After a vicious campaign which at times descended to violence and even death threats against Mr Galloway from Muslim fundamentalists, the man expelled from the Labour Party for declaring Mr Blair and President Bush "wolves" pronounced judgement.
"Mr Blair, this is for Iraq," he said. "All the people you killed, all the lies you've told, have come back to haunt you. The best thing the Labour Party can do is sack you." Ministers are certain to be alarmed at the evident pressure on moderate Muslim leaders in Britain, after anti-war sentiment was also identified in the defeat of former immigration minister Barbara Roche in Hornsey and Wood Green. If the strain of anti-semitism was a factor in these contests, the politics of race were in play in Keighley in Yorkshire where the leader of the British National Party Nick Griffin won 9 per cent of the vote.
Fielding a record number of candidates, the BNP slightly increased its overall share of the vote in Thursday's contest which it aimed to use as a springboard for local elections next year. However despite fears that he, too, might suffer a Muslim anti-war surge, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw comfortably defended his seat in Blackburn.
The United Kingdom Independence Party failed to register any breakthrough following its success in last year's European elections. And its former "star" Robert Kilroy-Silk - who left UKIP to form his own Veritas party - failed badly in his attempt to take Erewash from Labour.
One major story of the night was the failure of the Liberal Democrats to successfully advance on Conservative territory in pursuit of their claim to provide "the real opposition". While Mr Kennedy opened up the contest with Labour on the left, his "decapitation strategy" failed to unseat the Conservative leadership in the form of Oliver Letwin, Michael Howard or the man most fancied to succeed him, shadow home secretary David Davis.
Other candidates being canvassed as possible Tory leadership contenders last night included co-chairman Dr Liam Fox, health spokesman Andrew Lansley, and former foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, who returned to Westminster as MP for Michael Portillo's old Kensington &Chelsea seat.
However as Mr Blair insisted he had heard the electorate and would now work relentlessly on their priorities, the big political talking point at Westminster was the future of the Labour leadership.
Former minister Robin Cook, who resigned from the cabinet over the war, said Iraq and Mr Blair himself had been issues in the election. Suggesting that Mr Blair would want to "reflect", Mr Cook said: "He has to consider to what extent he can leave the party and the nation guessing as to when he will go."