From the triggering of Article 50 – which May did on March 29, before she called the snap election – there is a two year period to negotiate terms of the exit.
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Opposition party leaders were also quick to call for her resignation, including the Liberal Demo- crats’ Tim Farron, who said: “We will now have a government that is weaker and less stable at a time when we are about to embark on the most hard and complex negotiations in our history”.
European Union leaders expressed fears that May’s shock loss of her majority would delay the Brexit talks, due to begin on June 19, and so raise the risk of negotiations failing. “The Prime Minister called the election because she wanted a mandate and the mandate is that she has lost seats”, he said after his win from his seat at Islington North in north London.
Niblett said: “Having made Brexit the rationale for the election, she nevertheless made no effort during the campaign to explain how she would manage the negotiation or what a successful deal would look like”.
May’s Conservative party is still the largest party in Parliament, but no longer has enough seats to govern alone, after key seats fell to the Labour Party. The DUP declined to comment.
Labour, instead, rose to 261 seats, showing a gain of 36. The Conservatives secured just 318 seats, not enough to reach the 326 seat threshold for a parliamentary majority.
With May’s mandate shattered, the departure is less likely to be a “hard” Brexit in which Britain leaves the single market and European Union citizens will no longer be able to move freely between European Union member states and the UK. “Now let’s get to work”, she said.
“I don’t think Theresa May and this government have any credibility”, Corbyn said, predicting that there could be another election within months.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who took the party from one Scottish seat to 13, said there would now have to be “consensus within the country about what it means and what we seek to achieve as we leave”. Labour surpassed expectations by winning 262. Some are blaming David Davis, a Cabinet minister, who pushed hardest for the snap polls, which seems to have backfired the party.
Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, said: “With initial exit polls pointing to the Tories losing seats and that Prime Minister May’s early election gamble is not paying off, markets are pricing in a more complex outlook for policy implementation, including Brexit”. “With a weak negotiating partner, there’s the danger that the negotiations will turn out badly for both sides”.
Page said Corbyn, a lifelong left-wing activist who has spent decades speaking to crowds, was underestimated as a campaigner. That would also make it improbable that Britain could secure the rapid free trade agreement it wants with the European Union after it leaves.
In a WhatsApp message to Conservative lawmakers, Johnson said: “Folks we need to calm down and get behind the prime minister”.
She also promised to deliver the changes she set out after the two recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, giving police more powers and tackling radicalisation.
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Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI’s director general, said: “With (Other OTC: WWTH – news) only ten days before Brexit talks begin, the United Kingdom needs to be fast out of the blocks”.
