London - Prime Minister Theresa May faced
calls to quit on Friday after her election gamble to win a
stronger mandate backfired, throwing British politics into
turmoil and potentially delaying the start of Brexit
negotiations.
With no clear winner likely to emerge from Thursday's vote,
a wounded May vowed to provide stability, while her Labour rival
Jeremy Corbyn said she should step down.
An updated BBC forecast predicted May's Conservatives would
win 318 of the 650 House of Commons seats, eight short of a
majority, while the left-wing opposition Labour Party would take
267 - producing a "hung parliament" and potential deadlock.
Sky News also predicted May would lose her majority, scoring
somewhere between 315 and 325 seats.
With talks of unprecedented complexity on Britain's
departure from the European Union due to start in just 10 days'
time, there was uncertainty over who would form the next
government and over the fundamental direction Brexit would take.
"At this time, more than anything else this country needs a
period of stability," a grim-faced May said after winning her
own parliamentary seat of Maidenhead in southeast England.
"If ... the Conservative Party has won the most seats and
probably the most votes then it will be incumbent on us to
ensure that we have that period of stability and that is exactly
what we will do."
After winning his own seat in north London, Corbyn said
May's attempt to win a bigger mandate had backfired.
"The mandate she's got is lost Conservative seats, lost
votes, lost support and lost confidence," he said.
"I would have thought that's enough to go, actually, and
make way for a government that will be truly representative of
all of the people of this country."
May had unexpectedly called the snap election seven weeks
ago, confident of sharply increasing the slim majority she had
inherited from predecessor David Cameron before launching into
the Brexit talks.
Instead, she risked an ignominious exit after just 11 months
at Number 10 Downing Street, which would be the shortest tenure
of any prime minister for almost a century.
"Whatever happens, Theresa May is toast," said Nigel Farage,
former leader of the anti-EU party UKIP.
May had spent the campaign denouncing Corbyn as the weak
leader of a spendthrift party that would crash Britain's economy
and flounder in Brexit talks, while she would provide "strong
and stable leadership" to clinch a good deal for Britain.
But her campaign unravelled after a major policy u-turn on
care for the elderly, while Corbyn's old-school socialist
platform and more impassioned campaigning style won wider
support than anyone had foreseen.
Sterling fell by more than two cents against the U.S. dollar
after an exit poll showed May losing her majority.
"A hung parliament is the worst outcome from a markets
perspective as it creates another layer of uncertainty ahead of
the Brexit negotiations and chips away at what is already a
short timeline to secure a deal for Britain," said Craig Erlam,
an analyst with brokerage Oanda in London.
In Scotland, the pro-independence Scottish National Party
suffered major setbacks. Having won all but three of Scotland's
59 seats in the British parliament in 2015, their share of the
vote fell sharply and they lost seats to the Conservatives,
Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
The SNP's leader in the British parliament, Angus Robertson,
was among those who lost their seats.
The centre-left, pro-EU Lib Dems were having a mixed night.
Their former leader, Nick Clegg, who was deputy prime minister
from 2010 to 2015, lost his seat. But former business minister
Vince Cable won his back, and party leader Tim Farron held on.
With the smaller parties more closely aligned with Labour
than with the Conservatives, the prospect of Corbyn becoming
prime minister no longer seems fanciful.
That would make the course of Brexit even harder to predict.
During his three decades on Labour's leftist fringe, Corbyn
consistently opposed European integration and denounced the EU
as a corporate, capitalist body.
As party leader, he unenthusiastically campaigned for
Britain to remain in the bloc, but has said that Labour would
deliver Brexit if in power. The party has not given a detailed
plan for Brexit but has said its priorities would be to maintain
the benefits of both the EU single market and its customs union.
"As a Brexiteer who believes in it with all his heart and
soul, my fear is that Corbyn forms a coalition with the SNP and
a few Lib Dems and we look down the barrels of a second
referendum in a few years' time," said Farage.
In domestic policy, Labour proposes raising taxes for the
richest 5 percent of Britons, scrapping university tuition fees,
investing 250 billion pounds ($315 billion) in infrastructure
plans and re-nationalising the railways and postal service.
Early results were in line with the exit poll, with Labour
doing better than expected. That was in part because votes that
had previously gone to UKIP were splitting evenly between the
two major parties instead of going overwhelmingly to the
Conservatives as pundits had expected.
“UKIP voters wanted Brexit but they also want change,"
Farage said.
"They are fundamentally anti-establishment in their
attitudes and the vicar’s daughter (May) is very
pro-establishment. And I think she came across in the campaign
as not only as wooden and robotic but actually pretty
insincere."