Still a few results to come in but it looks as though there will be a weak and wobbly Conservative government dependent upon support from the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party. Several different trends seem to have emerged. Governing parties (Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists) lost ground, yet big parties prospered at the expense of small ones. The most pro-Brexit party, UKIP, was more or less eliminated. More young people voted this time and they caused much of the upset. This is another of those odd British elections in which the combined left parties got more votes yet the combined right parties got more seats (similar to what happened in the US presidential).
Theresa May is trying to stay on as prime minister, but I can't see this working. The Conservative Party are intolerant of losers. The position of the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has strengthened, but not enough to make him PM. All this bodes ill for the EU negotiations because it is difficult to believe that any government formed in this circumstance can actually deliver what it promises. A weak Conservative government trying to bring about a "hard" Brexit when the electorate clearly do not want it is not a happy scenario. We could be in for another election before very long.
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Corbyn has been a surprise, at least for me.
Thanks, Cayetano and Andrew. There are certainly many dimensions, security and austerity among them. The country does not like elections and tends to punish parties that hold them unnecessarily. What now? Interesting times.
It is sounding as though Theresa May may will stay on as PM because the alternative for the Conservatives is a leadership election which could be very divisive for them. On the surface the new situation is not so different from how things were before the election - small Conservative majority (now including DUP) with Theresa May as leader - but morally things have changed quite a lot. The PM has lost some authority and the Labour and Liberal parties have been fortified. This means that seriously leftist policies are now respectable within the UK political debate as they have not been for several decades, but it does not mean that they will triumph and guide a government. It may, in fact, mean that Labour in fact stay in opposition longer since they will find it more difficult to capture the moderate voters that they need to actually win. So the country will go forward with a Conservative government, but one that finds its power and room for manoeuvre limited. This will probably mean an increase in government debt, for instance, since unpopular policies (cutting services, raising taxes) will be more difficult to push through. The big speculation is whether it will change the government line on Brexit as well as whether we shall find ourselves in the middle of yet another election in the middle of the period of the Brexit negotiations. Big uncertainty there. Also, there will have to be a Conservative leadership election before too long and that means that potential leaders will already be working behind the scenes, which will also be uncomfortable for the PM and could easily spill out into splits on other issues that the press will amplify. Neither of the two largest parties is strongly united. Labour seems to be pro-Brexit in the north and anti- in the south. The Conservatives also have a pro-Europe minority within their ranks. The one thing everybody seems to agree about is that Theresa May made a big mistake by calling this election and campaigning the way she did.
The combined left parties having more votes than the right yet the right winning also happens in Spain... You are having a great electoral turmoil this time, as in any other European country (just remember France or Austria): positions are becoming more and more polarize as Europe is splitting into two...
..I'd only wish UK do not turn off democracy via freedom's restriction in order to "protect" people from terrorism: I've heard that speech before. Perhaps I'm wrong (more than probably), but I do love UK so much, and now with Brexit, xenophobia and hard-wired politics, it is resembling Thatcher's years again... Or V for Vendetta...
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