Paisley and Renfrewshire South constituency winner Mhairi Black of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Labour's Douglas Alexander react at the Lagoon Leisure Centre in Paisley, Scotland Friday May 8, 2015. (Photo: AP)
A 20-year-old Scottish National Party candidate beat the Labour Party’s campaign chief and shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, for the parliamentary seat for Paisley and Renfrewshire South on Friday, in one of the most shocking blows for Labour in a general election that saw them roundly beaten.
Mhairi Black, a third year political science student at Glasgow University, has become the youngest British MP since 13-year-old Christopher Monck entered Parliament in 1667, according to British daily the Guardian.
This election marks a surge for the Scottish nationalists, who took 56 seats out of 59 parliamentary constituencies in Scotland according to the final results reported by the BBC.
Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives secured a parliamentary majority, although the momentum of the SNP, who support Scottish independence, might constitute a challenge.
In her victory speech, Black vowed to represent everyone in her constituency to the best of her abilities.
“This election is about making the voice of this constituency and the whole of Scotland heard more effectively at Westminster than ever before,” she said.
According to the latest results announced on BBC, the Conservatives defied polls predicting a close race to win 330 seats to Labour’s 232, securing the Conservatives the necessary majority of 326 seats to form a government.
The result was the Labour Party’s worst electoral defeat in three decades, and party leader Ed Miliband has announced he will step down.
The Liberal Democrats, Cameron’s coalition partners, were another casualty of the vote, losing 48 seats to return just eight members of parliament. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was deputy prime minister until the general election, has also announced his resignation as party chief.
The leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, has also announced he will step down after failing to win his constituency vote.
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