UK 'wakes up to hung Parliament'.

As expected, Britain wakes up without a newly elected Prime Minister, and it may be a few days before we find out whether Brown will leave Downing Street to make way for Cameron.

As the Tories prepared to claim victory, Labour made clear it would try to hang on to power by forging a partnership deal with the Liberal Democrats. Downing Street sources said Gordon Brown would try to form a coalition government, arguing that the sitting government has the first right to form an administration even if it is not the biggest party.

After retaining his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat, Mr Brown said: “My duty to the country coming out of this election is to play my part in Britain having a strong, stable and principled government, able to lead Britain into sustained economic recovery and able to implement our commitments to far-reaching reform to the political system upon which there is a growing consensus in our country.”

Cameron, inevitably, is arguing that Labour have lost the right to govern.

“I believe it is already clear that the Labour Government has lost its mandate to govern the country? What is clear from these results is that our country wants change. That change is going to require new leadership.” He promised to provide “strong, stable, decisive and good government”.

It is also true that Cameron has not done enough to convince the British electorate that he is the man who should lead us for the next five years.

But the fact remains that, for the moment, Gordon Brown is still our Prime Minister.

It remains a fact, despite what Cameron's friends in the media will claim, that he has not done enough to win a clear majority of the voters over to his cause.

It's the best result we could have hoped for. We will probably end up with a Conservative government, but not with one which can claim it has a mandate from the British public.

As I always expected, despite the unpopularity of Brown's government, Cameron simply failed to seal the deal with the British electorate. He has no-one to blame other than himself. He ran a dreadful campaign, where he sought to hide what he intends to do and hoped to be elected simply on the grounds that he was not Gordon Brown.

His plan has utterly failed. He will probably still, eventually, limp over the finishing line; but the truth is that there is no conservative mandate from the British public.

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Tags: Brown, Cameron, Clegg, UK election 2010