David Cameron won a second term as prime minister after a campaign exploiting divisions between England and Scotland and promising voters a voice on quitting the European Union.
The separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) won 56 of 59 seats in Thursday's election, putting independence back on the agenda.
"As much as the Conservatives have triumphed, it comes at a very high price. They could go down in history as the party who helped create Scotland's independence," said Adrian Pabst, who teaches politics at the University of Kent. "The single biggest challenge is a disunited kingdom and sleepwalking into an exit from EU."
While U.K. Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage lost his bid for a seat, his party won 12.6 percent of the vote and the existential questions at the heart of the election are hardly settled. They will loom over Cameron’s government — which will have a razor-thin majority — at every turn.
"This brings our country to a very perilous point in our history, where grievance and fear contrive to drive our different communities apart," outgoing Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said as he resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrat Party.
"It’s no exaggeration to say that in the absence of strong and statesmanlike leadership, Britain’s place in the world and the continued existence of the United Kingdom itself are in grave jeopardy," Clegg said.
Cameron governing a united U.K. contrasts with his campaign message that Scots, in the shape of a Labour government supported by the SNP, could not be trusted to act in the interests of England.
"We must ensure that we bring our country together, we will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom," Cameron said in a speech outside his office on Downing Street. "It means bringing together the different nations of our United Kingdom."
Cameron said his government will honor commitments made after the Scottish independence referendum to create "the strongest devolved government anywhere in the world," handing powers over taxation to the parliament in Edinburgh.
He will "stay true to my word and implement as fast as I can the devolution all parties agreed," he said. "And no constitutional settlement would be complete if it did not offer also fairness to England."
Cameron has pledged "English votes for English laws," limiting the powers of Scottish lawmakers in Westminster on legislation affecting England.
Up north, the leader of last year's failed Scottish independence referendum was celebrating winning a seat in the U.K.'s House of Commons.
"The Scottish lion has roared," said Alex Salmond, former Scottish first minister, who had joked that he would be writing Labour leader Ed Miliband’s budget. Cameron's Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats won just one seat each in Scotland, highlighting the division with England.
Boris Johnson, the bookies' favorite to succeed Cameron as Conservative party leader when he steps down partway through his term, advocates a "federal offer" to Scotland.
"Everybody needs to take a deep breath, think about how we want the United Kingdom to progress," Johnson told the BBC after winning a seat in London. "I'm sure most people want to keep the basis, the idea of a unified state of one sort or another. I am sure that there is scope there for moving toward some sort of federal structure."
In the final weeks of his campaign, Cameron repeatedly told voters in England that they would suffer if the SNP had a share of power, inverting an argument used for decades by nationalists north of the border.
"How much would we get here in the southwest, the road improvements, the rail improvements, with a government being run by the SNP?" Cameron asked voters in Bath, in southwest England, on Monday.
Two days later he was giving the same message in Carlisle, near the Scottish border: "It would be a bunch of people who don’t want our country to succeed, who don’t actually want our country to exist, helping to run the government of the United Kingdom," he said.
Scotland voted by 55 percent to 45 percent to stay in the U.K. in a referendum on independence in September and the SNP capitalized on the surge of nationalism sparked by the campaign.
"The whole situation in Scotland is a source of great concern, the SNP will say we’ll want another referendum," said Wyn Grant, professor of politics at the University of Warwick. "While he's done much better than anticipated ... difficulties lie ahead. It’s not going to be plain sailing."
© Copyright 2026 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.