What battles lie ahead for Cameron’s second turn as prime minister?

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Joining me now for more on the outcome is Robin Niblett. He's the director of Chatham House, an independent policy institute in London.

Robin Niblett, welcome.

So, how do you read these results?

ROBIN NIBLETT, Chatham House:

Well, they — they're remarkable, in the sense that no one predicted them coming out quite the way they did. People thought the Conservatives might be able to cobble together a majority, but an outright majority wasn't expected.

I think it tells us that, at some level, the British people are still pretty cautious, certainly in the United Kingdom south of Scotland, where people saw the economy growing, unemployment low, and just decided, I think, they didn't want to gamble that upturn in the economy with the Labor Party who had got some into the mess in the first place.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So, what would say are the main challenges then coming out of these results for Prime Minister Cameron?

ROBIN NIBLETT:

Well, I think he has got two in particular.

One is Scotland, just the remarkable scene of the Scottish Nationalist Party taking 56 out of 59 seats, decimating Labor Party, for whom this had been the heartland of some of their best politicians. That means you have got a party in the north that believes up in Scotland that it has a mandate to stop austerity, to stop the cuts.

But, of course, you have now got a party in the rest of United Kingdom led by the Conservatives, who believe they have got a mandate to complete the job. So he is going to have to pull those two sides together, perhaps through an extensive extension of devolution to the Scots.

So, that's number one. Number two is the E.U. referendum. There will be a referendum held by end of 2017, the latest, on whether the U.K. stays in or leaves the E.U. And it will be based on some negotiations he now needs to undertake extremely quickly with his other European counterparts.

Then the final challenge for him is simply to do with the fact that the British economy is not yet fixed. We're still running a 5 percent deficit to GDP, or the highest in Europe, so a lot of cuts to come. So, he has got a very, very full plate.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So, what sort of alliances do you see him making in order to tackle these? How do you see — for example, you describe a clear difference with the Scottish National Party over some economic decisions. How do you see Cameron approaching that?

ROBIN NIBLETT:

Well, I think the way he wants to approach it this time is, he has got an outright majority; 331 seats gives him a majority certainly over the left-leaning parties, close to 30 majority, more like 15, if you count all of the other parties included.

So, this is his chance. After five years of having to do coalition government, where many Conservatives felt they had to compromise, this is his chance to follow the plan that the Conservatives saw. And so I don't think they're looking for partners. They would like to avoid having partners.

The danger of course is that he ends up a little bit in the situation John Major was in, in 1992. He had a majority of a bit over 20, a bit more than David Cameron has right now. But pretty soon, he found that his backbenchers, those without positions in the cabinet and ministries, started to go sort of suicidal on Europe.

They were absolutely determined to fight European integration. So when this E.U. referendum comes up, while he thinks he has got a majority to do his domestic agenda, he might find that his party rebels against him on the Europe part of his dossier.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

How does this — Robin Niblett, does this new lineup affect the U.K.'s relationship with the United States?

ROBIN NIBLETT:

Well, it's interesting, because David Cameron when he took power in 2010, his coalition government, I think made a deliberate effort to try to wean the U.K. off its special relationship with the United States.

There was a sense to which the United States was pivoting or rebalancing to the Asia Pacific. The Brits had to be more self-interested. Some people described it as a return to the kind of new Elizabethan foreign policy, get back into bilateral relationships with China, with India, with the Gulf states, with Latin America.

And there's been a real effort to try to push the U.K. into a more sort of commercial diplomacy. To be frank, it's not worked that well. And I think we will see in the second term perhaps a more cautious to foreign policy — partly, he has got such a full domestic agenda — and a hewing back to the United States to try and work together and be supportive on issues from Iran, to the climate change negotiations later on this year, obviously to tackling the extremism coming out of the Middle East.

So I think we're in for a more sort of balanced, almost traditional foreign policy.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Robin Niblett joining us from London, we thank you.

ROBIN NIBLETT:

Pleasure. Thank you.