MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Rob Gifford has been following events in Edinburgh.
ROB GIFFORD: The Labour Party has completely dominated politics, north of the border, for the last 50 years. But today, it lost that dominance. The Scottish Parliament, set up in 1999 to deal with local issues such as health care and education, has 129 seats. The SNP won 47 of them against the Labour Party's 46. After problems with a new electronic voting system delayed the announcement of the final results, the SNP's leader, Alex Salmond, was jubilant.
BLOCK: Scotland has changed for good and forever. There may well be a Labour governments and Labour first ministers in the decades to come, but never again will we see that Labour Party assume that it has a divine right to rule Scotland.
GIFFORD: The Labour Party also lost seats across England and Wales, though the Conservative Party with its new leader, David Cameron, did not do as well as some had hoped. Tony Blair, facing the electorate for the last time, put a brave face on the defeat.
P: Everyone said that we were going to get hammered. It was going to be a rout, and it has not turned out like that. I think that, yes, of course, it's the mid-term. And you always take a hit in the mid-term, but these results provide a perfectly good springboard to go on and win the next general election.
GIFFORD: Rob Gifford, NPR News.
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