UK leader May seen fighting for survival after election failure

May’s weakened position in the party rules out big changes to the Cabinet lineup. The Telegraph said senior Conservatives including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, interior minister Amber Rudd and Brexit minister David Davis were taking soundings over whether to replace her. It may cause some political deadlock, but if it means policies start swinging back in the way of the interests of students and the underprivileged I’m all for it.

May and her team of ministers retain full legal powers and will continue heading the government, until a new one is sworn in.

The Conservative leader had called the election in a bid to extend her majority and strengthen her hand in the looming Brexit negotiations, but her gamble backfired spectacularly.

On Brexit, the DUP supports leaving the European Union but opposes a return to a “hard” border with Ireland – which could happen if May carries through her threat to walk away from the talks rather than accept a “bad deal”.

With 649 of 650 seats in the House of Commons declared, May’s bruised Conservatives had 318 seats – short of the 326 they needed for an outright majority and well down from the 330 seats they had before May’s roll of the electoral dice. Labour surpassed expectations by winning 262. Her main opponent – Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, known for his left-wing views – was stumbling from mishap to mishap, unable even to muster solid support from his party’s own lawmakers. She added later that she would “reflect on the results” and figure out what went wrong.

“We need a government that can act”, EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

A man who stuck to his figurative guns even when much of his own party turned against him.

“May won’t be able to make any compromises because she lacks a broad parliamentary majority”, he said.

The British prime minister was cruising along two months ago with a solid majority in Parliament and several years to run on her party’s mandate. “What the country needs more than ever is certainty… it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that”, May said as she pushed to form a government with the backing of the Democratic Unionists.

“I asked for a categoric assurance that if any deal or scoping deal was done with the DUP there would be absolutely no rescission of LGBTI rights in the rest of the United Kingdom, in Great Britain, and that we would use any influence that we had to advance LGBTI rights in Northern Ireland”.

DUP leader Arlene Foster’s initial comments were non-committal: “The prime minister has spoken with me this morning and we will enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to bring stability to our nation at this time of great challenge”.

Downing Street said it hopes to finalize the deal next week, after Parliament resumes sitting.

“There will be no deals, no coalitions and no confidence and supply arrangements”, he said. It is also opposed to same-sex marriage and any extension of abortion tights. DUP’s specific regional concerns, its sometimes-strident social conservatism and its bitter rivalry with the republican Sinn Feinn party are bound rather to complicate matters for May.

The Prime Minister’s campaign was widely criticised for not engaging with voters and stumbling on key issues. The border was eliminated as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the Troubles.

The British government doesn’t have long to ink a deal.

The Queen’s Speech is the address that the Queen reads out on the occasion of the State Opening of Parliament in front of MPs and peers.

“I don’t think throwing us into a leadership battle at this moment in time, when we are about to launch into these hard negotiations, would be in the best interests of the country”, Evans said. After three recounts, Labour took the wealthy London constituency of Kensington from the Conservatives by just 20 votes. Steven Fielding, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham, called her “a zombie prime minister”.