GENERAL ELECTION
OVERALL SUMMARY
| CON | 318 (-13) | 42.4% (+5.5%) |
| LAB | 262 (+30) | 40.0% (+9.5%) |
| SNP | 35 (-21) | 3.0% (-1.7%) |
| LD | 12 (+4) | 7.4% (-0.5%) |
| DUP | 10 (+2) | 0.9% (+0.3%) |
| Others | 13 | 6.3% |
Turnout 68.7% (+2.6%)
THERESA MAY has desperately clung onto her position as Prime Minister following a failed gamble on another dramatic General Election night.
Mrs May's Conservatives won the most votes and most seats in Thursday's poll but they fell short of retaining even the narrow majority which they had previously held.
Consequently, Mrs May has been forced into doing a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party who won 10 seats in Northern Ireland, though it is only a loose arrangement and not a formal coalition.
Certainly, it is not the strong and stable government which Mrs May had set her heart on when she called the election seven weeks ago.
In all, the Tories lost a net total of 23 seats against Labour in England and Wales, and only gains from the Scottish Nationalists provided any solace.
The SNP had won 56 out of the 59 Westminster seats in 2015 but, with their own record in the devolved Holyrood government to defend, they were always likely to go backwards.
Indeed, Nicola Sturgeon's party lost 13% of their previous share of the vote in Scotland, resulting in almost 40% of their MPs being unseated.
The defeated included their former party leader Alec Salmond in Gordon and Angus Robertson, who had been their leader in the House of Commons during the last Parliament.
But the biggest name of the night to lose his seat was former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who finally got his comeuppance as Labour gained Sheffield Hallam from the Liberal Democrats.
Despite this, the Lib Dems at least had a mixed night, rather than a totally disastrous one.
There were modest gains in Scotland at the expense of the SNP and in London against the Conservatives as former ministers Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Jo Swinson all returned to Parliament.
Overall, though, the party's vote share was down slightly, and there was little sign of a revival in their former heartland in south west England.
Elsewhere, Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas defied a slight decrease in her party's overall vote to retain her Brighton Pavilion seat.
However, the UKIP vote collapsed massively just about everywhere, down from 12.6% to just 1.8%.
Paul Nuttall was humiliated in the Boston and Skegness constituency, taking only just over 3,000 votes, and he became the only party leader - so far - to resign.
At the time of writing, Mrs May has not followed suit despite this having been a huge personal humiliation for her.
After all, just a few weeks ago, the polls suggested that she was on course for the massive landslide victory which she craved heading into the Brexit negotiations.
In Jeremy Corbyn, she faced a supposed relic of an opponent, a man who had struggled to keep his party united during the course of his leadership.
But, with the launch of the manifestos, the tone of the campaign changed.
The Conservatives' policy on social care became dubbed the dementia tax and, generally, the discussion moved away from Brexit and towards the provision of services.
Historically stronger ground for Labour, Mr Corbyn was able to point out that - even after seven years of austerity - Mrs May was set to make even more cuts.
Worse still in the eyes of many of the public, the Tories did not even appear to be prepared to defend their policy positions.
For, while Mr Corbyn toured the country holding mass rallies, Mrs May organised small private events with a particularly memorable instance of her hiding away coming in a barn in Aberdeenshire.
Rarely can there ever have been a lazier, more arrogant, more insulting campaign in a General Election in Britain.
Terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, which killed a combined total of 30 people, naturally left a sombre backdrop to the election, and campaigning was briefly suspended twice.
But, on its resumption, Mr Corbyn went straight back on the offensive, criticising Mrs May for cutting police numbers during her six-year tenure as Home Secretary.
Suddenly, it was Mrs May who was having to defend her political past - and there is a certain further irony in her eventual deal with the DUP.
The DUP's past links with loyalist paramilitary groups are more well-founded than anything connecting Mr Corbyn to the IRA - and yet, as it stands, their 10 MPs now hold a significant stake in determining Britain's future.
That, of course, includes the Brexit negotiations. There, a diminished Mrs May, previously a Remainer herself, will head to the table aware that she only retains any sort of power courtesy of MPs from Scotland and Northern Ireland, areas which both voted to stay in the EU.
Already, the lack of authority which Mrs May commands, even within her own party, has been exposed by the resignation today of her two top aides Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.
But, rather than shoring up Mrs May, their departure undoubtedly makes her weaker still - and, far from delivering her a massive landslide majority, this whole election has turned into a complete mess.
By contrast, things are looking up for Labour. True, the party still finished 56 seats short of the Conservatives - but there has been some excellent progress, especially in the south.
Seats like Peterborough, Enfield Southgate and Reading East - all won in the 1997 landslide under Tony Blair - have returned to the Labour fold after an intervening period of Conservative control.
More astonishingly, Labour gained Canterbury, a seat which had been held by the Tories since its inception in the 1800s.
And then, in the final result to declare, Kensington - the richest constituency in the country - fell to Labour after a third recount.
Overall, Mr Corbyn won over 12 million votes, more than Mr Blair in his "quiet" landslide in 2001 as Labour polled at 40% for only the third time since 1970.
The return of two-party politics has undoubtedly helped - though it has also assisted in keeping the Conservatives in power.
Nevertheless, if there is now going to be a period of binary politics, a strong opposition must now focus on presenting itself as a government-in-waiting.
That means more support for Mr Corbyn from his own side, less sniping against him and certainly no embarrassingly pointless and diversionary leadership elections.
It seems inconceivable that the Conservatives will not, at some point in the near future, tear themselves apart over Mrs May's continued leadership after her failed gamble. Meanwhile, the arrangement with the DUP is tenuous in the extreme.
This General Election, when it was called, seemed incredibly unnecessary - and yet perhaps the greatest irony of this result is that it has necessitated another.
Strong and stable times, indeed.
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