May reaches 'outline' power deal after election fiasco

"The Prime Minister called this election on the basis she would need a stronger mandate to negotiate Brexit".

Six months ago, I predicted that British Prime Minister Theresa May's government wouldn't last far beyond May of this year.

Trump offered his warm support to May over the just- concluded parliamentary election, it said.

The Tories, as they are commonly known in the United Kingdom, will now have to govern as a minority party, or try to form a coalition government, or force another general election.

The stunning poll outcome now leaves May battling to unite different factions of her party and reliant on a handful of Northern Irish parliamentarians just nine days before Britain starts the tortuous process of negotiating its departure from the EU.

But her party is deeply divided over what it wants from Brexit and the result means British businesses still have no idea what trading rules they can expect.

With almost two-thirds of the seats counted, the results appeared to be generally bearing out an exit poll that predicted the Conservatives would get 314 of the 650 seats in Parliament, down from 330, while the Labour Party was projected to win 266, up from 229.

May, who went into the election with a reputation for quiet competence, was criticized for a lackluster campaigning style and for a plan to force elderly people to pay more for their care, a proposal her opponents dubbed the "dementia tax".

"We don't know when Brexit talks start", European Union President Donald Tusk said in a Twitter posting. A politically diminished May entered into an "understanding" with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which won 10 seats, to remain in power.

He also said with his impressive performance in the General Election he would now be able to attract some of the Labour Party's biggest names to the Shadow Cabinet.

But Conservative lawmakers TIME spoke to in the hours after the vote said there was no appetite to remove May, despite the party's losses.

"We are ready for the negotiations".

Complicating the outlook for the pound, however, is the strong showing by the Labour Party, which has advocated for closer ties between Britain and the European Union single market.

Before Mrs May stitched together her party's deal with the DUP, Labour briefly contemplated bidding to form a minority government. One can nearly hear the death knell ringing in Edinburgh as stalwarts of the Scottish independence movement, including the former First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, lost their seats to unionist candidates. She wanted, for example, an end to the automatic right of EU nationals to settle in the U.K. She wanted total control over U.K. trade while maintaining full access to the EU single market, while massively reducing or even eliminating the U.K.'s budget contribution to EU coffers.