Well done to the SNP and Plaid Cymru

The re-election of the Scottish National Party at Holyrood is a truly amazing achievement and, as Nicola Sturgeon has said "the SNP made history" by becoming "the first party to win a third consecutive Scottish Parliament election."

The mainstream media may be focussing on the fact the SNP will not have an overall majority, but the numbers do not lie and it has been summed up well on the SNP website.

The SNP has won an historic third term in the Scottish Parliament with 63 MSPs, over a million votes in Scotland’s constituencies – a first – and the highest share of the constituency vote ever achieved.

Here’s a run-down of the Scottish Parliament 2016 Holyrood election in numbers:

At over a million, the SNP polled a record number of constituency votes – 1,059,897 to be precise. No party has ever done this before. The previous highest number was 908,392, polled by Labour in 1999.

In fact, the SNP polled more than Labour and the Tories put together. Collectively they polled 1,016,105 votes.

The SNP has won 59 constituency seats, surpassing the previous record of 53 seats, achieved by Labour in 1999, as well as the SNP in 2011.

The SNP has polled 46.5 per cent in the constituency vote, up from 45.4 per cent in 2011. This is higher than the previous record.

The SNP won a clean sweep of six out of Scotland’s seven cities: Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Stirling and Perth.

It was also great to see Plaid Cymru achieve a significant increase in their vote and increase their number of Assembly Members from 11 to 12, and to overtake the Conservatives to become the second largest party in the Assembly.

And what a win for Leanne Wood, who won her home seat of the Rhondda, overturning a 6,739 Labour majority to win with a majority of 3,459 for Plaid Cymru.

I am personally also very pleased to see Steffan Lewis elected to the Assembly via the list for South East Wales. Steffan has been a good friend of Cornwall for many years, speaking at a recent MK Conference and I know he will make an amazing AM.

As the leader of MK, I will continue to take inspiration from the achievements of both Plaid and the SNP.