The political future of the United Kingdom has become clearer after the results of the general election emerged around the country. David Cameron says he hopes to govern for all of the UK after the Conservatives took 331 seats - enough to form a slender majority in the Commons. Labour has been all but wiped out by the SNP in Scotland and suffered a disappointing set of results elsewhere, while the Lib Dems are left with just eight MPs after many party heavyweights such as Vince Cable and Danny Alexander lost their seats. So with battles won and lost and the fall-out and celebrations beginning, BBC correspondents examine the implications and challenges that lie ahead for the new government - and for those whose political careers have been ended by voters. No pollster, no pundit, no political leader saw it coming - not even David Cameron himself. Governing parties don't gain seats. Parties that have implemented painful cuts and are promising more certainly don't. Until that is the Conservative Party did - achieving what had seemed to be Mission Impossible - a Tory majority. Until that is David Cameron's personal triumph which triggered the near simultaneous resignation of his three principle opponents - Messrs Miliband, Clegg and Farage. They did so in part because they helped to crush their partners in coalition these last five years - reducing the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party to a size when it can fit into two London taxis and still have two seats to spare. In part because the extraordinary tidal wave of support for the SNP swept dozens of once safe Labour seats away. In part because Nigel Farage persuaded millions to vote for him but secured just one seat - not, though, the one he was standing in. The question uppermost in the prime minister's mind as he assembles his new government is how to keep the kingdom united. "Above all I want to bring our country together," he revealed after the result, "to reclaim a mantle we should never have lost - the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom". Looking at the political landscape from Land's End today is very different to the view from John O'Groats. A sea of Conservative and Unionist blue dominates the scene across much of England, while a field of SNP nationalist yellow stretches to the horizon and beyond from the north. David Cameron's greatest challenge is to prevent the union he supports being torn apart by mutual resentment - resentment from Scotland at a Westminster government dominated by English Tories, and resentment from England at the preferential treatment people think is being given to the Scots. Those who assumed the future of the Union had been safeguarded by the Scottish referendum must think again.
