Theresa May’s fragile foundation

NHC

Theresa May’s fragile foundation

It was rather a surreal experience watching the BBC’s election night analytics and opinion show on the BBC News Channel on Thursday June 8, from shortly after the closing of the poll at 10pm (I lasted until about 1am on Friday morning). It was the exit poll – a joint effort by the BBC, ITV and Sky News – that set the scene for a night of traumatic change for the ruling Conservative party led by Theresa May, and qualified jubilation for the fractious Labour party (‘qualified’ because they didn’t actually win the election) led by Jeremy Corbyn that achieved its best-ever share of the popular vote (40.3%) in decades. Reaction on Twitter was immediate and humorous (or not, depending on where you sat in the political spectrum). The outcome, as we well know now, was a hung parliament very much in line with the exit poll prediction; a Conservative party in government, winning the most votes (48.9%) and with the most members elected to Parliament, but without a majority; and Theresa May, the Prime Minister, the architect of this self-inflicted debacle now widely regarded at home and abroad as highly damaged goods with a political reputation in tatters, whose very …

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First published as Theresa May’s fragile foundation on NHC