By Joel Miller

Amid overwhelmed polling stations and with not enough voting slips to go round, the Conservative Party have won the most seats, but fallen short of an overall majority.

Tory ministers, MPs and party officials have labelled the result a “decisive rejection of Gordon Brown” after 13 years of failure.

After being re-elected in his Witney constituency, David Cameron said: “The Labour Government has lost its mandate to run the country and the Conservative Party is set to win more seats at this election than we have in 80 years.

“What is clear from these results is that the country wants change. That change needs a new governemnt and we will bring strong, stable, decisive and good government for our country. This is a great country and I will put the national interest first,” he said.

Despite holding on to the first seat to be declared, Sunderland South, Labour has lost close to 100 seats, demoting them to the second largest party in the House of Commons.

David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, surprised everyone when he admitted: “My instinct is that regrettably we have lost the election. We should now go for uniting the anti-Conservative forces.”

The Labour party still have enough seats to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats to give them more than the Conservatives, but not an outright majority.

Despite the convention that Gordon Brown can have ‘first dibs’ on a coalition, there is nothing to stop the Conservatives from declaring themselves the winner and trying to lead a minority government.

Nick Clegg said he would go first to the Tories to see if a Government could be formed.

Alan Johnson, the Labour Home Secretary, said over a possible coalition with the Lib Dems: “I have no problem [with it] at all. If the will of the people is that no party has an overall majority, that’s where grown-up, mature politicians have to be.”

Shortly after his re-election in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Gordon Brown flew back to London to enter into talks immediately with the Liberal Democrats over the possibility of a Lib-Lab pact.

Despite a surge in the opinion polls following the Leaders’ Debates, the Lib Dems have fared much worse than predicted.

Lembit Opik, the Liberal Democrat MP, lost his seat in Montgomeryshire on a spectacular 13 per cent swing from the Lib Dem’s to the Conservatives.

Mr Opik, formerly engaged to one of the Cheeky Girls, said: “I’m really quite disappointed that I lost. It’s a sad time for me.”