British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip stand on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, London. Photo / AP
British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip stand on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, London. Photo / AP
by Nicola Lamb, analysis
Theresa May's clumsy stumble to electoral disaster confirms Britain as The Awkward Man of Europe.
The 2010 hung parliament, the 2014 Scottish referendum, the 2015 election, last year's Brexit referendum ... we should have known Friday's general election would not go down quietly and predictably.
The short term seems set. The country has a minority government. The Conservatives with 318 seats (down 13), helped by usual allies the DUP with 10, squeak over the 326-parliament majority line. A progressive coalition of Labour (262, up 30), the SNP (35, -21), Liberal Democrats (12, +4), Greens and Plaid Cymru would only reach 314 - less than the Tories on their own.
But Britain is left with more instability and questions.
What happens to Brexit now? Is hard Brexit shelved? Who leads the country throughout the negotiations? Is May finished? Who comes next? What does Labour have to do to take the leap from moral victories to real victories? What does it say about leadership and the electorate in general?
A badly scarred May, with angry colleagues and brickbats flying all around, is a much-diminished figure.
She has a temporary reprieve because of the tight Brexit timetable and the new electoral uncertainty. The new Parliament starts on Tuesday and Brexit talks with Brussels begin on the 19th.
But her two top advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, have resigned and she only has a possible confidence and supply agreement with the DUP keeping her head above water. Potential successors will be circling already. She will have to negotiate for support on future legislation. The new Scottish bloc of 13 Tory MPs, will make the most of their influence.
As BuzzFeedUK correspondent James Ball summarised on Twitter: "Theresa May is too weak to: Command a commons majority; reshuffle her Cabinet; keep her advisers. But still wants to negotiate Brexit."
She could survive for several months, but the party will not want her to take it into another election campaign. Like Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, May lost the election she shouldn't have lost, to a candidate she shouldn't have lost to.
The key issues to consider are how did May fall foul of the populist, anti-establishment voters breaking around her and how do other politicians manage to do better?
She thought that by projecting strength, pushing a hardline on Brexit and terrorism, she would be in tune with the electorate. But it's complicated.
The New York Times explains: "Anti-establishment sentiment is scrambling parties and their agendas. Britain's two leading parties each ran against the establishment from within it ... It remains unclear whether anti-establishment voters, in this election or others, tend to choose the most anti-establishment platform, the most outside-the-system leader or the opposite of whoever is in power".
Mail on Sunday tripe - I am backing Theresa may. Let's get on with the job
May's time at the top has been characterised by big gambles, miscalculations and uncompromising public stances over Brexit, US President Donald Trump, calling the snap election and her chief opponent, Labour's Jeremy Corbyn.
Perhaps the desire to be a strong, second Iron Lady resulted in some inflexible overcompensation and fear of failure. Perhaps she was trying too hard to fit with an older, tabloid-pushed conservatism, that seemed a backward step after David Cameron's rule.
During the BBC's election coverage on Friday, political editor Laura Kuenssberg described May as not being "nimble" enough as Prime Minister and reliant on a small circle of advisers, especially Timothy and Hill.
May had years of experience in former Prime Minister Cameron's Cabinet in the high-profile Home Secretary role. It normally has a quick turnover rate, but May was competent enough to survive there for six years.
Her first problem, on taking over as Prime Minister last year, was squaring her referendum campaign support for Remain with having to lead on the Leave result.
She talked up her toughness on the Brexit divorce for domestic consumption. "During the Conservative Party leadership campaign I was described by one of my colleagues as a 'bloody difficult woman.' And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be [European Commission head] Jean-Claude Juncker," May said.
She also famously said that "no deal is better than a bad deal" but the possibility of that hard Brexit - leaving without a deal with the single market - could be less likely now.
Her dealings with Trump have haunted her leadership and featured a string of rookie mistakes.
British politics still suffers some trauma from the Iraq war years, President George W. Bush and his commonly described 'poodle', Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Yet, instead of waiting to get a handle on the new President, May rushed to the White House in the first week of Trump's presidency and held hands with him instead. An invitation for a state visit to Britain was issued with almost desperate haste.
With Bush and Blair, there was always the sense of the Brit working hard to make a cactus palatable to the world. The same dynamic was in play again.
When Trump issued his travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, May at first refused to condemn it and then said she disagreed with it. When the Republican saw the London attacks as an advert for that travel ban and climbed into the city's Muslim mayor, May struggled to separate herself from the Trump yoke, although she said Sadiq Khan was doing a good job.
People demonstrate in Parliament Square against the possible Conservative and DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) coalition government. Photo / AP
Despite trying to present an image of calm, 'stable' strength in a difficult period, May has struggled with consistency.
She said she wouldn't call a snap election and then did so. During the campaign, she pulled the Conservatives' unpopular elderly care 'dementia tax' and said it wasn't a u-turn. She said that just the loss of six Conservative seats would see Corbyn in power. She said was prepared to "tear up" human rights law to deal with terrorists.
In the same spooky way that Trump's old tweets keep predicting his current behaviour, she once said Britain would not get the right Brexit deal if "we have the drift and division of a hung parliament".
May was the centre of the Tory campaign and began with high approval ratings. But she revealed herself to be a stilted campaigner, uncomfortable at trying to connect with voters and express concern for their concerns. Above all she appeared to be scared to make mistakes, avoiding debates and focusing on meetings with party activists.
Changing messages and using evasive, committee-cooked and distant language are suspect, these days, to many voters.
For younger voters especially, personal authenticity and 'telling it as it is' are important for establishing trust and figuring out how out of touch a politician is.
Mary Ann Sieghart writes in an opinion piece in Politico Europe that: "Voters on both sides of the Atlantic sent their politicians a clear message. They want honesty, candor, humanity and authenticity from their representatives. They want questions answered, not dodged. They want a real conversation, not vacuous slogans. And they hate seeing their intelligence insulted. That's why they punish disingenuousness so harshly."
Asked on Pod Save America about how he keeps his 'own voice' and avoids 'Washington-speak', US Democrat Senator Chris Murphy said "the coin of the realm is authenticity".
He said: "We have been taught that ... one mistake can cost a career [but] these are the outliers than the norm. [Trump] makes more mistakes in a day than most politicians make in a lifetime".
Murphy added: "I tell all of my colleagues that they should be sending less of their communications through their policy communications staff, that ultimately it will get whitewashed to the point that it's not you any longer... We have to be authentic, we have to be real... There are these words that people know are BS in the end."
One of the best exponents in Britain in recent years of a clear, direct personal style, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, appears to have hurt her credibility for having gone back on her promise to not hold another independence referendum "for a generation".
She saw her SNP's record haul of 56 Westminster seats in 2015 drop by 21. Sturgeon admitted that her push for a second independence referendum after the Brexit result was a factor. The Guardian reports that the "SNP's heavy losses ... allow her to delay that indefinitely while saving face".
Labour's Corbyn, unpopular with many of his own MPs and down in opinion polls at the start of the election campaign, ripped pages from the Bernie Sanders manual, so much so that some US commentators suggested his performance proves that Sanders would have beaten Trump.
Both Corbyn and Sanders supporters projected hopes onto an iconic, clearly defined character, who was from outside leadership central casting.
Corbyn, like Sanders, held large rallies to create the buzz of a movement. Labour used social media to reach young voters and bypass the right-wing press. The were rewarded with a large youth vote.
The Conservatives may have officially called the election to strengthen May's hand over Brexit negotiations, but economic concerns after years of austerity and Remain revenge were voting factors. Young Britons had their potential European job futures taken away by older voters supporting Leave.
The Labour manifesto offered free university tuition and more money for schools and the health service. As US writer Jeet Heer noted: "It looks like you can get young people, minorities, and white working class in a coalition if you offer them something."
The issue for Labour is whether Corbyn can evolve from figurehead and appealing campaigner to believable prime minister. After the result, Corbyn will have a party mandate to take it through to the next election. But maybe it would take someone with more mainstream appeal - perhaps Sadiq Khan? - to leap the next step and actually win an election.
Newspapers fronted with photos of British Prime Minister Theresa May and others are displayed at a shop in Westminster in London. Photo / AP
The British election saw the collapse of the far-right Ukip vote. In four elections over the past year in Europe far-right populists have been defeated. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight noted: "Every European nationalist party has underperformed its polls since Trump was elected".
Clever politicians are managing to absorb some populist sentiment in the electorate.
New French President Emmanuel Macron has made his name since his election as an anti-Trump and faces the test of legislative elections today. Opinion polls say his year-old movement will be the most popular of the contenders.
The New York Times writes: "French voters, in a move anticipated by no known models of politics in the populist era, appear to be flocking to Macron's party, which is somehow both pro- and anti-establishment: newly founded, but embracing centrist, globalist politics."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has begun to take a stance against Trump, and faces a fourth term in September with a her party ahead of its main rival by 14 points.
HuffPost economy writer Zach Carter explored the trends behind the British election and last year's US election in a thread of tweets. His comments included:
"Authoritarian appeal comes from a promise of certainty, stability and safety after an outbreak of pain and uncertainty. After a financial crisis, centrist politics amount to an appeal to the very standards and ideas that have failed people.
"Anti-authoritarian politicians need to make a clean break with what failed, and offer a psychological alternative to authoritarian order. The best pitch is an expanded social welfare programme. I Am On Your Team And Will Take Care Of You. The policy really does matter, but mostly as a guidepost. Tone and approach is just as important. Corbyn nailed both."
In Britain, Sieghart writes, "neither party leader has the support of their MPs in parliament. Corbyn's disagree with his policies but are stuck with him. May's are furious that she has needlessly squandered a parliamentary majority. It is unlikely that they will put up with her for long".
