Devestmaytion

The general election in the UK has been an utter failure for Theresa May. Out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservatives has won 318, Labour have won 262, the SNP has won 35, losing 20 seats to Conservatives and Labour. The Liberal Democrats have won 12 seats, up from the eight they won in 2015. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, won 10 seats. Sinn Féin, the Northern Irish nationalist party (whose MPs traditionally boycott Westminster, never attending the House of Commons) has won seven seats. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh party has four. Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party has kept the single Green seat in Brighton. The independent John Bercow, speaker of the House of Commons has won his seat in Buckingham. All other parties have failed to win single seat.

The majority required for a party to form a government alone is 326 seats in the House of Commons. In the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party won 330 seats, a small majority.

May has announced that she will be forming a coalition government with the DUP.

The future of the country is now highly uncertain.

May had hoped to win a mandate and a stronger majority in the election. In this, she failed totally.

When announcing the election, May said, 'We need a general election and we need one now because we have at this moment a one-off chance to get this done while the European Union agrees its negotiating position and before the detailed talks begin.'

May recently posted the following statement on Facebook, 'The cold hard fact is that if I lose just six seats I will lose this election, and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of Europe.'

A total of 326 seats are required for a party to have a majority in the House of Commons. In the 2015 general election, the Conservatives won 330 seats.

May's failed campaign strategy involved various ideological concessions to the British Left. She warned the British public of the potential consequences of voting for the 'coalition of chaos' including her primary opposition, the Labour Party. Her slogan was ‘strong and stable’. Her campaign (at least initially) focused more heavily on her than her party and its ideology.

At the Conservative Party conference in 2002, then Party Chairman Theresa May gave a speech in which she stated that 'There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies. You know what some people call us – the Nasty Party.'

May is 60 years old. She has been the MP for Maidenhead since the constituency was created in 1997. She is an old politician, playing an old-fashioned game of politics. No longer does the large working class exist in Britain. No longer are there millions of poorer people who feel spiteful towards the perceived corporate bias of the Labour Party.

Many of the few white working class voters who still exist were easily stolen from Labour by UKIP. This was mainly due to their concern about rising immigration. May repeated her pledge to reduce net migration to below 100,000. However, she totally failed to deliver on these figures as Home Secretary and the public had little reason to trust her this time.

May tried to steal Labour votes with several minor and complicated left-wing economic policies and a few speeches about equality and hinting to One Nation Conservatism. This strategy has clearly failed.

The radical Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand, has vastly outperformed all predictions of Labour's electoral success. He appealed to the public with his personality, appearing regularly on TV and seeming 'relatable' to many people. A Conservative who may have likely tried such an equivalent strategy is Boris Johnson. However, due to political backstabbing by his colleague Michael Gove, he was unable to gain the leadership many expected him to win after Brexit.

May might have been more successful if, instead of appearing stiff, wooden and overly serious, she had, like the only other female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, used her personality to further a real right-wing agenda in the face of a deeply socialist opposition.

Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have held their seats.Former Liberal Democrat Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2015, Nick Clegg has lost his seat of Sheffield Hallam to Labour. The UKIP vote has greatly decreased since their rise in 2015. Ed Miliband has won his seat in Doncaster North. Ex-SNP Leader Alex Salmond and SNP leader in the House of Commons Angus Robertson have lost their seats to Conservatives.

The election bears many similarities to the primaries of the Democratic Party of the United States where Hillary Clinton won narrowly and largely through corrupt means against the socialist Bernie Sanders.

May has made a grievous mistake, which hopefully the Conservatives learn from and never repeat.