Her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn, once written off by his opponents as a no-hoper, said May should step down and he wanted to form a minority government.
For Anthony Gardner, the former USA ambassador to the E.U. and now a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, the sheer difficulties a weakened new government will face could end in the hardest Brexit of all - the negotiating period ending with no agreement.
The Conservatives fell 7 seats short of a majority, and May announced today that she would form a coalition government with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the socially conservative majority party in Northern Ireland.
"President Trump emphasised his commitment to the United States-United Kingdom special relationship and underscored that he looks forward to working with the Prime Minister on shared goals and interests in the years to come", the White House said in a statement on the telephone conversation between the two leaders.
May said Brexit talks would begin on June 19 as scheduled, the same day as the formal reopening of parliament.
The DUP is essentially the party of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, but they also have some pretty far-right views, including opposition to abortion, rejection of gay marriage, and climate change denialism.
With 649 of 650 seats declared, the Conservatives had won 318 seats.
In the polls, the Scottish National Party won 35 seats, the Liberal Democrats 12 and the Democratic Unionist Party got 10. And that points to an underlying dynamic of the election that helps explain it: the collapse of minor parties.
"She might start off doing that but the Conservatives might well replace her mid-stream", he said.
The DUP, which May referred to as her "friends", was non-committal in its initial remarks.
In a night that redrew the political landscape once again, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) lost millions of voters, triggering the resignation of leader Paul Nuttall. While she was expected to continue to push for a "hard Brexit" that would see the United Kingdom make a relatively clean break that would leave it outside the single market and the EU's free movement of workers, European officials had also expected she would have more leeway to make compromises, making for a relatively smooth transition. She did not get that mandate.
"Hard Brexit went in the rubbish bin tonight", former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who campaigned to stay in the European Union, said on ITV.
Qatar Airways urges UN action against Gulf blockade
Qatar's port authority says its cargo will go through Sohar, as well as Oman's port at Salalah. The UAE and Bahrain have signed the convention.
If she is to succeed in delivering the end of Britain's European Union membership which 52 per cent of the British public demanded past year, she must find a way to recapture the full support of her party because she will need their votes to pass legislation preparing for and ultimately enacting the departure.
"We need a government that can act", EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
He said having Britain as a weak negotiating partner could result in what he described as "a poor outcome".
"The British political system is in total disarray".
In the end, the "Strong and Stable" slogan proved to be just that.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said the result could mean a less radical split between Britain and the EU.
Not a word in the speech about the drop in the Conservative vote, nor of a campaign, commanded by herself and her aides, which failed to ignite and certainly nothing on the strong increase in the Labor vote led by Jeremy Corbyn, a man she has mocked incessantly since she took office. Other Conservatives have emphasised the importance of migration controls.
British politicians, including within May's own party, differ widely on what they want from the Brexit negotiating process.
Andy Street, the Conservatives' West Midlands metro mayor, who beat Labour in the mayoral election last month, said Theresa May should stay on as Prime Minister but needed to start "listening".
Her decision, reluctant or not, seemed at the time to promise a sure-fire win for a leader who had never led her party into an election.
Then, attacks that killed 30 people in Manchester and London twice brought the campaign to a halt, sent a wave of anxiety through Britain and forced May to defend the government's record on fighting terrorism.
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