BBC News Channel

Labout List editor, Mark Fegerson, says the Labour party faces an existential crisis after its near wipeout in Scotland, and gaining only a handful of seats in England, outside of London.

He says the Labour defeat is a symptom of wider problem, suggesting it goes back a decade. He says the last time the Labour party won a healthy majority was ten years ago “with 35.2% of the vote with only about two thirds of the country voting”.

“It has been a long time since the Labour party has seriously commanded the majority [of support] of ordinary working people, “ he says.

Mr Ferguson says Labour needs to go back to “first principles”. It’s been a long time since politicians looked or like sounded the people they are seeking to represent, he adds.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said: "No longer will Scotland be sidelined or ignored in Westminster."

She said the people of Scotland voted for an SNP manifesto which had “ending austerity as its number one priority”.

"As I told the prime minister yesterday, it simply cannot be, and it will not be, business as usual when it comes to Westminster’s dealing with Scotland," she said.

"Scotland spoke more loudly and clearly than ever before. Scotland’s voice will be heard more loudly than it ever has before. That voice will be a voice for more progressive politics."

She says to people than didn’t vote SNP: "We will work every day to win your trust."

Introducing the 56 MPs that will take their seats in Westminster on behalf of the SNP, their leader Nicola Sturgeon says: "The people have spoken, and the people have chosen the SNP to represent their interests in Westminster, as well as in Holyrood."

"We will represent in Westminster, as well as in Holyrood, all the people of Scotland," she says

“Our job is to repay the trust you have shown in us. Scotland has given the SNP a mandate unprecedented for any political party right across the UK,” she adds.

Scottish Nationalist Party leader Nicola Sturgeon addresses 56 SNP MPs who are going to Westminster.

The host of new SNP MPs in the process of lining up for a photo opportunity near Edinburgh.

BBC News Channel

Mark Wallace, editor of ConservativeHome, reflecting on the Tory party victory at the election tells the BBC: "It's a remarkable, very pleasing, but also bizarre situation. Anyone involved in politics will tell you they are pretty sleep deprived still at this point. So you do have a kind of dreamlike quality of whether it really happened or not. This was something that people had said for a long time that would never happen again – to get a Conservative majority."

Minds will inevitably turn to what will this mean and how David Cameron can manage a slim majority government, he adds.

BBC's Jane Hill

(Pictured left to right: Mark Ferguson, Mark Wallace and Mark Pack.)

BBC Radio 5 Live

Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie is challenged that with £12bn of cuts pencilled in, the Conservatives could lose support.

"If it makes the scale of cuts that are pencilled in, then I think it could be very unpopular indeed. The problem the Tories have at the moment is a lot of cuts have fallen on people of working age, including some people with disabilities, and pensioners have been completely protected.

"It used to be the case, ten, twenty years ago that on average pensioners were poorer than the average citizen. Now they're actually considerably better off... If really we are all in this together... then some of the cuts must go to pensioners."

Guardian , external columnist Jonathan Freedland warns that David Cameron faces substantial problems with debates over the future of the United Kingdom both in terms of holding the union together and its place within Europe coming up.

Over Scotland he warns:

BBC Radio 5 Live

Roger Helmer of UKIP is challenged that former leader Nigel Farage has "pulled a fast one" by saying he would stand down as leader of the party if he failed to be elected as the MP for South Thanet but then saying he would consider standing again for the UKIP leadership.

"He said if he lost he'd stand down, he has stood down... He is now a UKIP MEP, he's a member of the party, and as such... he is entitled to put his name forward. The question is quite simply not whether he decides he wants to be leader, but whether the party decides it wants him to be leader, and I have to tell you, from the soundings I've taken... there is quit a strong groundswell of opinion... which is saying: 'He is a great leader. We want him back'."

Mr Helmer added that there would also be other candidates.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Sir Menzies Campbell is challenged that the Liberal Democrats don't really have much choice for a new leader, given the leader has to come from the eight members of parliament returned. "I think that we've more than one candidate. You'll have to wait and see who the runners and riders are before you place your bet."

BBC Radio 4 Today

"If this election is compared to [19]92 then we want the next one to be compared to [19]97," Former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson tells the Today programme.

He says Ed Miliband started the process of selecting a new party leader on a genuine one-member one-vote basis that former Labour leader John Smith used back in the 1990s. “Not one member six votes, not one member no vote”, he says.

But the work needs to be finished before a new party leader is selected in three months’ time, he says. Mr Johnson says there is time to do that while at the same time having a fundamental honest discussion about what the Labour party is about.

"Labour's not finished, Labour will be back," he says.