London protesters scuffle with police at anti-Cameron rally

Protesters threw bottles, cans and smoke bombs at riot police in central London on Saturday in a demonstration against the re-election of Britain's Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

Scuffles broke out when marchers, blaring hooters, banging pots and chanting obscenities, confronted lines of police outside the gate leading to the prime minister's Downing Street residence. At one point a bicycle was hurled at police.

Authorities arrested four people, and two officers suffered minor injuries, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

Estimates of the number of people who took part in the protest were in the low hundreds. They including a group of about 25 black-clad youths with sunglasses and face masks.

Cameron, whose government has enacted tough spending cuts to bring down the budget deficit and has promised more to come, won a second five-year term in Thursday's election with an outright majority in parliament.

In so doing he became the first Conservative prime minister to win a second term since Margaret Thatcher.

Polls ahead of election day had shown Conservatives locked in a tight race with the opposition Labour Party, raising the possibility of days or weeks of negotiations to form a government. But in the end Labour was soundly defeated, in part due to the their rout in Scotland at the hand of Scottish Nationalist Party, who won 56 out of 59 contested seats there.

Ed Miliband subsequently resigned as the leader of Labour, saying the party needed to "rebuild after this defeat so we can have a government that stands up for working people again.”

"It's time for someone else to take forward the leadership of this party, so I'm tendering my resignation," he said.

The size of the Conservative win meant that they were able to form a government without the help of smaller parties. It also gives them a mandate to push forward with spending cuts that opponents fear could impact on cherished U.K. services such as the National Health Service.

Al Jazeera and Reuters