It was...

The Independent, The Guardian and Channel 4 News wot won it

6 May 2005    Shock win for Michael Howard

The Conservative leader is expected to become Prime Minister later today. Although the Tories are unlikely to dispose of an overall majority in the newly elected House of Commons, they will be able to form a government with the support of the LibDems. Charles Kennedy, LibDem leader said, 'We do not foresee any circumstances in which we can prolong the existence of a Labour government that took this country to war on false premises...'

Following the revelations about the legal advice prior to the 2003 Iraq war, given such prominence by The Independent, The Guardian and Channel 4 News, opinion polls showed a decline in support for Labour. But even they failed to reflect the extent to which former Labour voters have deserted the party.br>

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On the other hand, the bookmaker Paddy Powers as long ago as last Friday paid out on bets for Labour to be the largest single party.

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Update: There was a report on the BBC recently about how the US media were covering the British election with one piece for the whole campaign. I suppose they were talking about broadcasters. I found this without even trying.

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Comments here on napalm.

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Update (the real 6 May): My 'prediction' did not come true. Fortunately. The exit polls at 10pm gave Labour a majority of 66. This looks to be about spot-on. However, the predictions gave the Conservatives 209 seats and the LibDems only a gain of 2. It now looks like the Tories will have about 10 less than that and the LibDems will have more. Now for the European constitution...

Update : That Labour majority included a number of people like Bob Marshall-Andrews (---map---) who can be counted on to vote against the government on just about every crucial vote. Strangely, I got the impression from the BBC that he was heroically defending a wafer-thin majority. Looking at the website, he had quite a large majority (70 on the Tories' target list) and did not do any better than the national trend (though maybe better than many in the South-East).

Looking at my own constituency or Gisela Stuart's,  it seems that the Tories' vote has hardly changed and Labour have been helped by increases in the vote of UKIP/Veritas and the BNP.