Theresa May promised strength and stability. She has delivered the opposite. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Donald Trump is fixated on the idea that the world is laughing at the US. In the case of the UK, it has to be true: David Cameron launched an unnecessary referendum on EU membership; his successor Mrs May follows by destroying her political position. The country looks ridiculous. The general election has also increased the likelihood of “no deal”. Contrary to the idea that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, this would be a calamity, for both sides.
The irony of the election is that the Conservative party’s 42.4 per cent share of the vote was its highest since 1983. It was also higher than the monthly average of polls throughout almost all of the last parliament. What was unexpected was Labour’s ability to squeeze the minor parties, whose share of the vote fell to its lowest level since 1970. The party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, a perpetual rebel, proved the ideal pied piper of protest.
The prime minister has lost her majority and authority. As the former chancellor George Osborne noted, she is a “dead woman walking”. Mrs May now relies on the cantankerous Democratic Unionist party. She has also already wasted an eighth of the time available after triggering Article 50 of the EU treaty. She will find it virtually impossible to agree and then legislate the necessary compromises with the EU in time, if at all. Foremost among those compromises will be payment of large amounts of money and agreement to grandfather existing rights of EU citizens in the UK. Yet, quite apart from taking up time, another election might fail to resolve anything. It might be another hung parliament. The UK is in a spectacular mess.