Right Now Prime Minister Theresa May will try to form a minority government, after her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority.
• Mrs. May’s decision to call an early election in the hopes of expanding the Conservative Party’s majority in the House of Commons disastrously backfired.
•
Mrs. May, who became prime minister after the “Brexit” referendum on
June 23, batted away calls to resign. After meeting with Queen Elizabeth
II, she said she would try to form a government with the Democratic
Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
• With votes in nearly all of the 650 House of Commons constituencies counted, the Conservatives won 318 seats — short of the 326 needed for a majority.
The Labour Party had 261 seats, the Scottish National Party 35 and the
Liberal Democrats 12, with the remainder held by small parties.
Trump calls result ‘surprising’
President Trump had a simple, one-word answer when asked about his thoughts on the election results: “Surprising.”
Nearly
24 hours after the polls closed, the leader of Britain’s strongest ally
had little to say about the outcome, when asked by reporters during an
Oval Office meeting with the president of Romania.
May apologizes to candidates and announces senior cabinet positions
Mrs.
May apologized to former colleagues in the Conservative Party who lost
seats in the House of Commons, telling the BBC she “obviously wanted a
different result.”
“I
am sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats who didn’t
deserve to lose, and, of course, I’ll reflect on what happened,” Mrs.
May said in her first post-election interview.
She
turned the focus instead on the negotiations to leave the European
Union, set to begin in 10 days, detailing how she planned to enter those
discussions with a government that has the “national interest” in mind
“at this critical time for our country.”
Mrs.
May also indicated she would delay any staffing changes in her
administration. “What I am doing today is focusing on forming a
government,” she said.
Downing
Street later confirmed several senior cabinet positions would remain
unchanged: chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Home Secretary
Amber Rudd, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for
Exiting the European Union David Davis and Defense Secretary Michael
Fallon would all retain their roles.
Theresa May begins forming a government
Mrs.
May, who suddenly and unexpectedly finds herself without a majority in
Parliament, said on Friday that she would work with “friends and allies”
as she tries to form a government.
In a brief address
outside her office at 10 Downing Street in London after she returned
from a meeting with the queen at Buckingham Palace, Mrs. May made no
reference to her party’s poor showing, nor to questions about her
leadership.
What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons.
Instead,
she returned to themes that had dominated her campaign — negotiating a
British withdrawal from the European Union and maintaining the country’s
security, by cracking down on Islamist extremism and giving the police
expanded powers.
Poor performance brings calls for May to step down
In
the immediate aftermath of the election, the Conservative Party’s
stunning setback had prominent political figures wondering about Mrs.
May’s future. (If she were to resign, she would be the shortest-serving
prime minister since Andrew Bonar Law, who served 209 days in 1922 and
1923.)
A
former Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, batted away the idea. “I
think it would be a grave error to go into the turmoil of a leadership
election,” he told the BBC, while acknowledging that Mrs. May had “found
her position diminished.”
A
former small business minister, Anna Soubry, said that Mrs. May should
step aside. “We ran a pretty dreadful campaign,” she said.
Tim
Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, condemned Mrs. May’s
decision to press ahead. “Our Conservative prime minister rolled the
dice and put the future of our country at risk, out of sheer arrogance
and vanity,” he declared. “If she has an ounce of self-respect, she will
resign.”
Nicola
Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said her party
would fight to “bring an end to the austerity that voters, the length
and breadth of the U.K., are no longer prepared to accept.” She
criticized the Conservative Party for calling the referendum to leave
the bloc and for taking a gamble by calling an early election. “They’re
planning to cobble together an unstable administration, causing yet more
damaging uncertainty,” she said.
The D.U.P.: The new kingmakers
The
Democratic Unionist Party, which is historically composed of
Protestants, supports Northern Ireland’s remaining in the United
Kingdom. Northern Ireland enjoys close commercial, economic and
historical ties with the Republic of Ireland — a member of the European
Union — and the D.U.P. favors a close relationship with the European
Union, although it supported leaving the bloc.
“The
prime minister has spoken with me this morning, and we will enter
discussion with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to
bring stability to our nation at this time of great challenge,” the
party’s leader, Arlene Foster, said at a news conference in Belfast. She
did not specify what the party had demanded in exchange for its
support.
Ms.
Foster vowed that the D.U.P., which won a third of all votes cast in
Northern Ireland, would work to keep the United Kingdom together. “Those
who want to tear apart the union that we cherish and benefit from so
hugely have been sent a clear and resounding message,” she said, in a
clear reference to parties that would like to see Northern Ireland leave
the United Kingdom.
Why the Tories lost
John
Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde and the
BBC’s resident polling expert, said that Labour had benefited from a
big shift in support from two groups: Young voters and people who voted
to remain in the European Union. That more than offset the
Conservatives’ gain from a sharp decline in support for the right-wing
U.K. Independence Party.
The
Labour Party seized a seat in Canterbury, in southeastern England, that
the Conservatives had held since World War I. It took back the seat for
Glasgow Northeast from the Scottish National Party. And it held on in
Wales, a traditional stronghold.
The impact on ‘Brexit’
Talks
between Britain and the 27 other members of the European Union are
scheduled to begin on June 19, in accordance with the two-year process
for departure from the bloc. Mrs. May had said she was calling the
election to strengthen her party’s hand going into the negotiations.
Instead, Britain will enter those talks substantially weakened and
divided.
That
could mean that Britain is willing to take a softer stance, one
involving more concessions, in the talks. “ ‘Hard Brexit’ went in the
rubbish bin tonight,” George Osborne, a former chancellor of the
Exchequer, told ITV News. “Theresa May is probably going to be one of
the shortest-serving prime ministers in our history.”
Mr.
Davis, the official assigned to oversee the withdrawal, told the BBC
that the Conservative Party might have to revisit its pledge to take
Britain out of the European single market and customs union.
That
would be a major concession, and it immediately evoked outrage from
Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, an
ardent backer of leaving the bloc and a persistent thorn in the side of
the Conservatives. On Twitter, he was harshly critical of Mrs. May.
Ed Miliband, a former Labour Party leader, said it was impossible for Mrs. May to lead the negotiations.
However,
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a hard-line euroskeptic Conservative, said he believed
Mrs. May would continue leading the negotiations. “The prime minister
is the prime minister,” he said.
Consistency from Brussels
The
two-year clock on the negotiations over Britain’s withdrawal from the
European Union started ticking on March 29, and the message from
European leaders after the election results became known was clear: Get
on with it.
Jean-Claude
Juncker, the president of the European Commission, expressed his hope
that the talks would begin as scheduled. “As far as the commission is
concerned, we can open negotiations tomorrow morning at half-past nine,”
he said in Prague.
Before
the election, Mrs. May had emphasized that Britain would be better off
with no deal than a bad deal. Donald Tusk, the president of the European
Council, the body representing the European Union’s national leaders,
bluntly suggested that it would not be in the country’s best interest to
revisit that theme.
Guy
Verhofstadt, the chief coordinator on Britain’s exit from the bloc at
the European Parliament and a former Belgian prime minister, saw some
humor in the matter.
The Tories weren’t the only losers
The
Scottish National Party, which made huge gains in 2015, lost 21 seats.
Angus Robertson, the Scottish National Party’s top lawmaker in the
British Parliament, lost his seat. So did Alex Salmond, the former first
minister of Scotland and a leader in the push for Scottish
independence, who entered the British Parliament only two years ago.
“We
will reflect on the results, we will listen to voters, and we will
consider very carefully the best way forward for Scotland,” Ms. Sturgeon
said at a news conference on Friday.
Support
for the U.K. Independence Party, which won more than 12 percent of the
vote in the 2015 general election, collapsed to around 2 percent. The
party once again failed to win a single seat in Parliament, and its
leader, Paul Nuttall, lost in Boston and Skegness, a district where
three in four voters opted last June to leave the European Union. He
resigned as the party’s leader on Friday morning.
While
Mrs. May was re-elected to her seat in Maidenhead, other ministers in
her government were not so fortunate. Among the Conservative ministers
who were toppled were Jane Ellison and Simon Kirby, who work in the
Treasury; Ben Gummer, a cabinet office minister; Gavin Barwell, the
housing minister; and James Wharton, an international development
minister. Ms. Rudd, the home secretary, barely held on to her seat, in
Hastings and Rye.
Nick
Clegg, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was ousted, but
another former leader of the party, Vince Cable, won back a seat he had
lost in the 2015 general election.
Turnout was high
As
of 7 a.m., turnout was running at 68.7 percent, from an electorate of
46.8 million. It was the highest turnout for a British general election
since 1997, when the Labour Party under Tony Blair won a historic
victory — the first of three consecutive election wins.
The pound fell
The British pound fell sharply
immediately after the release Thursday night of an exit poll that
showed that the election would likely result in a hung Parliament.
As
the results followed out that forecast, the currency has edged lower
still. The pound was down more than 2 percent against the dollar, at
$1.2656, its lowest level in about two months.
Echoes of 1974?
British
commentators are already drawing comparisons with 1974, when the two
dominant parties competed for voters against the backdrop of bitter
divisions over European integration.
Britain
joined the European Economic Community, a precursor to the European
Union, in 1973. The Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, called a
general election in February 1974, seeking a stronger mandate under the
banner, “Who governs Britain?”
The
vote resulted in a hung Parliament — in which the Labour Party had the
most seats. Mr. Heath tried to form a minority government with the
Democratic Unionist Party but failed. The new Labour prime minister,
Harold Wilson, called a second election, in October that same year, and
won a small Labour majority.
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