U.K. Snap Election Leads to a Hung Parliament 1 / 18

• Her Party Calls on Her to Resign

© Matt Cardy-Getty Images British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May on June 9, 2017 in Maidenhead, England.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May has won the most seats in the June 8 snap election, but lost her majority to form an effective government.

With more than 600 seats now declared, the Tories are projected to get 316 seats, according to the BBC, which means voters have elected their second hung parliament in less than a decade. The Conservatives, or "Tories," will now have to rule with the help of other parties.

The result is being billed as one of the biggest political upsets in the country’s history, with the Labour Party defying expectations and projected to gain 265 seats in Parliament.

It could result in a phase of political instability for Britain. Some analysts are speculating a second general election, which would further cloud upcoming Brexit negotiations that are expected to start on June 19.

Back in April, the prime minister called the election as polls pointed to a landslide result for the her party. The gamble backfired. On Friday morning, it became clear the Tories lost seats in the south of the country while failing to break into Labour’s heartlands up north.



























The huge setback dashes May’s hopes to strengthen her hand in the upcoming "Brexit" negotiations with the E.U. Brexit Secretary David Davis suggesting to Sky News that the lost majority could amount to the Tories losing their mandate for a "hard Brexit"- where the country would leave both the E.U. customs and single market.

It also calls into question her longevity as leader of the party. "Clearly if she’s got a worse result than two years ago and is almost unable to form a government then I doubt she will survive in the long term as Conservative party leader" former Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne, told the British press, Financial Times reports.

Still, Brexit was not the main issue informing Thursday’s vote. Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn called on May to resign as it became clear that the people "turned their backs on the politics of austerity," he said after winning his seat of Islington North in the early hours of Friday morning. "[Labour] made a really positive offer to an electorate who is fed up with austerity, that has doubts about globalization, and the neo-liberal economic model we have had for so long," Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London tells TIME.

The biggest scalps of the night, to the benefit of Labour, included Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer in Ipswich and Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister. The pound tumbled by close to 2% after an initial BBC exit poll, which predicted a hung parliament.