Conservative Party Wins U.K. Election
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: live from Westminster, after 24 hours of unexpected triumph and political carnage, major political parties' scalps fell.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... resigning as leader of the Liberal Democrats.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am standing down as leader of UKIP.</s>AMANPOUR (voice-over): The surprise, outright victors step forward.</s>DAVID CAMERON, PRIME MINISTER, GREAT BRITAIN: The government I led did important work. It laid the foundations for a better future. And now we must build on them.</s>AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour, live outside the Houses of Parliament as the United Kingdom reels from the most dramatic political earthquake in decades. Thursday's unpredictable general election delivered an unexpected outright win for the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, who's now returned to Downing Street to begin his second term as prime minister. He's speaking after a meeting with the Queen this afternoon, Mr. Cameron promised to, quote, "make Great Britain greater still."</s>CAMERON: I truly believe we're on the brink of something special in our country. We can make Britain a place where a good life is in reach for everyone who is willing to work and do the right thing. Our manifesto is a manifesto for working people. And as a majority government, we will be able to deliver all of it.</s>AMANPOUR: Mr. Cameron's outright victory means that he won't have to enter into a coalition government with a rival party. His three closest rivals all suffered a night of brutal and shocking defeats. Those party leaders, including Labour's Ed Miliband, were left with no other choice but to step down.</s>MILIBAND: Earlier today, I rang David Cameron to congratulate him. I take absolute and total responsibility for the results in our defeat in this election. I'm so sorry for all of those colleagues who lost their seats.</s>AMANPOUR: The Labour Party's was the Scottish National Party's gain. They had a triumphant night north of the border, winning an astonishing 56 out of 59 seats. The Conservatives may have won the most seats down south, but it was by a slim majority. Party Chairman Grant Shapps joined me outside the Houses of Parliament earlier today to discuss some of the many challenges the party now faces.</s>AMANPOUR: Grant Shapps, welcome to the program.</s>GRANT SHAPPS, CONSERVATIVE PARTY CHAIRMAN: Thank you.</s>AMANPOUR: Chairman of the party, did you even believe when the exit poll came out last night that you practically had a majority from the get-go?</s>SHAPPS: Well, I won't kid you. I was pleased to see the exit poll, but of course now we know we've done even better than the exit poll. Suggested we've got the overall majority, at least David Cameron is now back in Downing Street, preparing the government.</s>AMANPOUR: What happened? Do you need to fire all the pollsters? Or did that 40 percent undecided create a last-minute tsunami? Were they shy Tories who didn't want to say they weren't voting Tory? What happened?</s>SHAPPS: Well, I do think there are a lot of people who were genuinely undecided in this election and they were leaving to the last moment. I met a woman at the polling station in my constituencies, in Hertfordshire, who I overheard her say to a teller, that's somebody official at the station, I overheard her say I just -- how do I do this? I've never voted before. I pulled her to one side and I said I hope you don't mind me asking. What caused you to vote? You don't have to tell me how. What's caused you to vote? And she said, I watched the debates. I've never voted before. But I just suddenly realized this election's really important and there's somebody I didn't want to see at Downing Street. I thought they would have messed it all up having made all this progress. I guess she was probably the perfect exactly of the way a lot of Britons felt yesterday, we got this far. Let's not mess it up. Let's not go back to square one. Let's finish the job.</s>AMANPOUR: All well and good, let's finish the job. But it was, by all accounts, a pretty divisive election. Prime Minister Cameron has come out today to say, well, let's continue our economic recovery and let's gather the United Kingdom all together and let's be a party for the whole nation. How do you do that when so many people thought that playing on fears of the SNP and just generally playing on all sorts of divisive, negative politicking all around, was so prominent in this election?</s>SHAPPS: Well, I should just point out, for one thing, more people said the Conservatives had a positive campaign and a positive message than for any other party, so we certainly were trying to tell people what we would do. I'm sure it's one of the reasons people have voted for it. But the other thing I'd say is that we don't, the SNP</s>AMANPOUR: What about the other promise he made towards the end of his Downing Street speech, that I will come forward with the pledges we all made at the time of the referendum to the three different nations in the United Kingdom, but especially Scotland, I will make it the most evolved government, including tax and others, in the world? Many people say, yes, about time. You all fled up there in September and you haven't fulfilled your promises. Is the pedal to the metal now on that?</s>SHAPPS: Yes, and actually, by the way, what people said at the time, the leaders from here said in that vow, so-called vow, is that we will create the draft legislation and publish in the third of the year, which is exactly what we did. But it would be for the next Parliament, i.e., the one that's going to start today, tomorrow, in order to put that legislation through into law. So so far it's exactly to the timetable it was described. Now we're going to put it in law. And at the same time, we're going to make sure that English people and people in other parts of our United Kingdom, Wales and Northern Ireland also get a fair deal, English votes for English laws, for example, let's make sure we have a balanced constitution that bits our United Kingdom, one of the most successful partnerships in the world as a nation, let's make sure it continues.</s>AMANPOUR: Talking about in the world, one of the things the world looks at is whether it will remain a United Kingdom and people, whatever the SNP says, do not believe or can't trust that they won't seek another referendum, keep seeking independence and one of the challenges for David Cameron is to keep this United Kingdom. Can you do that?</s>SHAPPS: Well, the SNP themselves said this was a decision for a generation. And it seals the issue. It sealed the issue. I -- the SNP aren't saying --</s>AMANPOUR: How come nobody believes it then?</s>SHAPPS: -- look, in the end, Scotland will have to decide what it wants to do. But I think you would be wrong to assume that people who voted SNP yesterday were voting for independence. No, they were voting because they were fed up with the Labour Party in Scotland, who happened to hold nearly all of those seats. By the way, we only have one Conservative seat in Scotland. But we held it. So we are unchanged in Scotland as Conservatives. And I think actually Conservatives will end up providing the real balance in Scotland. You're either, you know, SNP or I think in future perhaps a center right Conservative.</s>AMANPOUR: One of the things that Nicola Sturgeon did say is that, yes, this is not a mandate for another referendum or independence unless things change significantly. One of the things that could be a significant change is if Great Britain gets out of the E.U. in this in-out referendum, that Prime Minister Cameron has promised. That's also a challenge for him, isn't it, to keep Britain in the E.U.? He's being pushed by his right flank, by UKIP, which has actually, you know, only got one seat; Nigel Farage has resigned. And now he's had to deliver on this referendum. Do you think you're going to stay in Europe?</s>SHAPPS: Yes, look, first of all, the Conservative position, David Cameron's position is we want to renegotiate with Europe. We think Europe's got too big, too bossy, too interfering. We don't think it's everywhere and actually we're a sovereign nation. We can look after most of these issues, many of these issues ourselves. So we have that renegotiation. We'll put the results of that renegotiation to an in-out referendum of the British people by the end of 2017. The British people can make up their own minds.</s>AMANPOUR: You all have a big smile on your face today, again, this is an amazing result for you because just a few weeks ago, everybody was talking about, well, does David Cameron have the fire in his belly? He's already said he's not going to run again. People were talking about leadership challenges. What happened? Did he suddenly find the fire in his belly or what?</s>SHAPPS: I think there are two ways to kind of address that question. First is to say, look, I know David Cameron. He's always got a fire in his belly. And he's driven by trying to make this country the greatest country it can possibly be. In the last five years, we took it from being as bust as Greece. Look at Greece now; sadly, they're in the same situation as or worse than they were five years ago. Britain is the fastest growing economy in the world last year. We have unemployment tumbling. David Cameron has made sure that he's delivered that. You have to have a fire in your belly to do it. So that's the first thing. It's a long-term thing and we talked about our long-term economic plan for the next Parliament. It's one of the reasons we do vote on it. The other thing to say is actually a lot of people didn't make up their minds until the last minute. It was one of those elections where people wanted to balance all the contending arguments, look at the different leaders, look at the policies and then come to their decisions. It happened at the last minute. I suppose David Cameron's passion, I'm sure, in the last week or two of that campaign will have helped push people over the line.</s>AMANPOUR: And on that note, thanks so much for joining us.</s>SHAPPS: Thank you.</s>AMANPOUR: That was Grant Shapps, the chairman of the Conservative Party with me here earlier, and of course that party wasn't the only victor in Thursday's election. Eight months after rejecting independence, as we have said, the Scottish people have transformed their Nationalist Party from a minor political player to virtually the only game in town. So what does that mean for the U.K.? I speak with a top SNP leader when we come back.