The British snap election had a result that many people didn’t expect, especially not Prime Minister Theresa May.
May rationalized the election by saying a majority for her party in parliament would be the only way to get the best Brexit possible as the country left the E.U. She was hoping to win more seats; instead, her party’s losses have shocked not only her, but many who followed the election.
“A stunner,” said news analyst Charlie Sennott on Boston Public Radio today. “Suddenly she loses her majority in parliament, everything’s up for grabs and she’s now trying to assemble some form of an alliance that will allow [her] to hold on to power. She’s hanging in there by a thread.”
May will likely form an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, a party Sennott calls the “Protestant old line guard” that is “very conservative.”
“They would come in and provide her a very razor thin majority coalition government inside the parliament, but it would leave her really vulnerable,” he said. “There are a lot of things that could come from this rather perilous alignment that she’s made with the DUP.”
One possibility?
“She could still be replaced by her party with a new leader,” said Sennott.
Charlie Sennott is a news analyst at WGBH, where he also heads up the GroundTruth Project . To hear his interview in its entirety, click on the audio player above.
