“A shaky Theresa May vowed to fight on today despite suffering catastrophic losses as her election gamble humiliatingly backfired – leaving a hung parliament just 10 days before Brexit talks are due to start. As the Tories’ Commons majority was brutally stripped away by voters, Mrs May faced open calls from her own MPs to ‘consider her position’ as a jubilant Jeremy Corbyn demanded she make way for him to become PM. But an ashen-faced Mrs May, who called the contest three years early in a bid to capitalise on sky-high poll ratings, insisted the Conservatives were still the largest party with an expected 319 seats. She insisted the country needed a ‘period of stability’, adding: ‘It is incumbent on us to ensure that we have that.’ As the knives came out for Mrs May, former chancellor George Osborne lambasted her campaign performance as ‘wooden’ and her manifesto as a disaster, making clear he did not believe she could survive for long.” – Daily Mail
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>Today: ToryDiary: ConHome snap survey. Should May stay or go?
>Yesterday:
“ConservativeHome, the influential website, called for Mrs May’s joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, to be forced out. They will be held responsible for calling the election. It will demand that cabinet government is restored while the party comes to terms with the result. Paul Goodman, the editor of ConservativeHome, wrote: “It is clear that this election has left her authority deeply wounded, perhaps fatally, even if she returns to Downing Street as prime minister later today. When she called the poll, the Tories expected a landslide. [Yesterday morning] they believed they would win emphatically.”” – The Times (£)
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>Today:
>Yesterday: Lord Ashcroft in Comment: The estimated Conservative majority grows in my final model
“Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour was strengthened last night as election successes vindicated his Left-wing campaign. With Labour on course to secure 266 seats, Mr Corbyn called on Theresa May to resign, saying she should ‘go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country’. The result looks set to be a huge slap in the face to his Blairite critics and means the hard-Left stranglehold over the Labour Party will continue for years to come. Speaking at his Islington North constituency count this morning he shouted ‘Welcome to the Labour Parliament’, and described himself as feeling ‘wonderful’. Accepting victory after holding Islington North, Mr Corbyn said the UK could be a ‘different and fundamentally better place’.” – Daily Mail
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>Today:
“Both instinct and logic will impel her to the conclusion that she must stay for as long as necessary to get the ship of state on to an even keel and to prepare the way for a new leadership election, but not a moment longer than that. She will feel both exhausted and wounded but, more than that, profoundly sorry that she has failed the people and the causes that she sees herself in politics to serve. Much has been made of her rigidity and her reluctance to take decisions hastily but I have the feeling that she will not find this decision difficult. She surely knows that she must go as soon as departure would be seemly.” – The Times (£)
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“Leading figures across the EU warned that chaos in Westminster would make the Brexit negotiation timetable a near-impossible task with talks due to start in ten days. Theresa May’s political future was an open question after the exit polls, Bild, Germany’s biggest newspaper, reported while she was branded the “big loser” by a German Social Democratic Party MP. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, blamed the “mess” in British politics on a lack of true leadership and diplomats in Brussels lamented that there could be no reliable negotiating partner across the table. The view of EU capitals was that Mrs May needed a decent majority so she could face down hardline Conservative backbenchers who would refuse to compromise on the Brexit “divorce” money and the extensive rights Brussels wanted to see for EU citizens.” – The Times (£)
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Election:
>Yesterday:
“Alex Salmond has been kicked out of Parliament after losing his fight to be re-elected as MP for Gordon – ending more than 30 years in frontline politics. The former SNP leader joined more than a dozen of his SNP colleagues on the sacked list this morning in a grim night for the nationalists. He called the result a ‘grievous blow’ to the party but refused to say the second independence referendum is dead. Mr Salmond was swept away by a Scottish Conservative surge that saw an historic resurgence in the Scottish borders and the north east.” – Daily Mail
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>Today: MPs Etc.: Salmond falls! Scotland’s results are the silver lining to the black Tory cloud
“Nick Clegg was ousted by Labour in the Sheffield Hallam seat he had held since 2005. It came after the exit poll predicted a net gain of six seats for the Liberal Democrats, raising the prospect of a parliamentary party almost twice the size it was before the election but comprising mostly new MPs. Labour’s Jared O’Mara won the seat on a 4-point swing, despite investing fewer campaigning resources than in 2015, when the party cut Mr Clegg’s majority to just 2,353 votes… Tim Farron, Mr Clegg’s successor as party leader, was in trouble in Westmorland & Lonsdale, but held on after a recount. Mr Farron was elected to the seat in 2005, and won by 8,949 votes over the Conservatives two years ago. Jo Swinson, a former Lib Dem minister and tipped as a possible future party leader, won East Dunbartonshire back from the SNP after losing it in 2015. She overturned a majority of 2,167 votes.” – The Times (£)
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