Prime Minister Theresa May has suffered one of the most dramatic reversals in recent British political history, losing an overall majority in parliament in a snap election she had been predicted to win easily.
One outcome of the election may make British politics slightly more stable: The far-right U.K. Independence Party was almost extinguished, while the Scottish National Party, which had begun agitating for a new referendum on independence, lost a third of its seats.
"What the country needs more than ever is certainty", the Conservative leader said, as a political crisis brewed around her.
They quit Saturday after becoming a focus of blame for the Conservatives' election disaster.
"The mandate she has got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence", he said. It is also opposed to same-sex marriage and any extension of abortion tights.
The DUP has proved hugely controversial in the past over the homophobic and sectarian views of some of its representatives. Instead of accepting defeat, however, May claims that she will continue to push for Brexit negotiations.
Sunday's newspapers were unsparing, with The Observer writing: "Discredited, humiliated, diminished". It is not known if the Tory Party in Parliament will be united on Ms May's leadership.
"I can still be prime minister", Corbyn said.
The results confounded those who said Labour's left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was electorally toxic.
"This is still on", he said, adding he would vote down the government's programme when it comes before parliament this month. Two weeks earlier, a suicide bomber killed 22 people as they were leaving an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.
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DUP leader Arlene Foster's initial comments were non-committal: "The prime minister has spoken with me this morning and we will enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to bring stability to our nation at this time of great challenge".
But media reports suggest they had demanded the departure of May's joint chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, as the price for allowing the 60-year-old vicar's daughter to stay in office.
Voter turnout in the election was up from 66 percent in 2015 to nearly 69 percent, and half a million more young people registered to vote than before the last election.
The resignations of Timothy and Hill, on whom May had been heavily reliant since her previous job at the interior ministry, will be a personal blow. What she didn't bargain for were the Labour voters who were mobilized by their country's terrifying direction.
In an article for the Conservative Home website, Timothy conceded that the campaign had failed to communicate "Theresa's positive plan for the future", and to notice surging support for the opposition Labour Party.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who is gay, was among the first to express disquiet over a deal with the ultra-conservative DUP.
"I obviously wanted a different result last night", a grim-faced May acknowledged, promising she would "reflect on what happened".
Unlike the Labour Party - which sweetened its platform with things like free tuition for university students - the Conservative Party contained little to get people excited.
May announced the party would try to work with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, an alliance that is fraught with difficulties.
Unexpectedly faced with the prospect of dealing with now-shaky British leadership, perplexed European Union leaders sought to make sense of the drama but also made clear that while Britain might be accorded time to regroup, it should not expect an extension of the two-year deadline for the Brexit talks to end.
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