The 2017 election results have almost all been counted (at the time there are only 5 seats left to be delcared) and we are certain there is going to be a hung parliament. Which pretty much no one expected - no polls, few pundits and certainly not us until we saw the exit polls.
We’ve written you all a lovely guide on what a hung parliament is, and in short, it means that no party has got an overwhelming majority of seats and so therefore cannot form a government.
There is potential for Theresa May to stride into the Queen’s House and declare she’s going to run a minority government (which would take a lot of chutzpah) or, more likely, for a coalition government - where two or more parties get together to form a government, like the Conservative-Liberal Democrats did in 2010 - to be formed and present themselves as, technically, the winners.
We need to hit home, again, pretty much all of the opinion polls up until the election said the Conservatives would win with an outright majority, so things really are quite up in the air. Here’s what we do know so far:
1. Turnout was 69%, which is the highest we’ve seen since 1997, when Tony Blair’s New Labour won a landslide victory.
This isn’t quite the same for today’s Labour, but considering Jeremy Corbyn’s approval ratings were over 20 points behind May’s before the election was called, it’s pretty impressive.
2. The Conservatives have underperformed, losing 17 seats, and Labour have had a great night, gaining 28 seats.
3. The SNP, who held the third largest number of seats last election, lost 19 seats, many to Labour and some to the Lib Dems.
4. As for the Lib Dems? They’ve got four more seats than before, and some of these were taken by their old big players.
But we’ll delve into all that later when we look at last night's winners and users
5. A few days back, Theresa May threatened on Twitter that ‘If I lose just six seats, I will lose this election and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with Europe’.
Well, we repeat, she’s lost 17 seats.
6. The exit polls were right
The exit polls, put out at 10pm, predicted that the Conservatives would end up with 314 seats, Labour would have 266 and with 5 more to count, that’s where things are.
7. It's clear that Theresa May no longer has a mandate for Brexit negotations
She claimed at the beginning of the campaign that the only reason she called this snap election was to be able to go into negotiations in Brussels with a stronger hand. And she hasn’t got it.
8. The Brexit’s timetable has been thrown totally up in the air.
Talks are set to start on June 19th, but that seems unlikely with the sort of result that might not see a winner declared for days.
9. The pound has dropped in value overnight due to the uncertainties of the result.
10. It's currently being reported that Theresa May is NOT planning to resign as leader of the Conservatives, as she still has the most votes of any political party.
It seems possible that they will attempt to enter into coalition with Northern Ireland’s DUP party, who have 10 MPs… But May is set to give a speech at 10AM today, so we'll know more then.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @SophWilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.