.@faisalislam points out that according to the #ExitPoll, a “progressive alliance” could have as many seats as the Conservatives #GE2017 pic.twitter.com/Zk5bNdoZSD
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 8, 2017
On 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. Just over 73 years later, courtesy of Theresa May triggering the Article 50 procedure to leave the EU and calling today’s General Election, Britain now finds itself looking over the precipice, away from most of its allies.
The official exit poll predicts a hung parliament: 314 seats for the Conservatives and a possible 314 seats for a ‘progressive alliance’ of Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrats. The Brexit negotiations are due to resume next Tuesday and the UK already lost 4 weeks’ preparation time due to the General Election. The deadline to complete the negotiations remains 29 March 2019.
If the exit poll is close to being correct, the Conservatives could lose 16 of the 330 seats they had won in 2015. This is rather more than the condition Theresa May had set for leaving Jeremy Corbyn (or rather, in practice, Keir Starmer) to lead the Brexit negotiations.
If I lose just six seats I will lose this election and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with Europe: https://t.co/OwbfDseOJh
— Theresa May (@theresa_may) May 20, 2017
Of course, the exit poll after the UK Referendum on 23 June 2016 had predicted the opposite result to the Leave vote which emerged by the morning. Still, for now, this does not appear to be the resounding mandate Theresa May had called for to enter the negotiations with the EU27 for the UK to leave the EU.
Here’s that #ExitPoll: if accurate, we could be looking at a hung parliament pic.twitter.com/j5a9z2lyi7
— Guardian politics (@GdnPolitics) June 8, 2017
Some thoughts from Tagore:
Man loses his true stature when he fails to unite fully with his fellows. A complete man is one who has this capacity for union, a lone individual is a fragmented being. We know that a child dreads ghosts only when he is alone. This is the lone person’s fear of his own weakness. Most of our fears are replicas of this fear of ghosts. — The Co-operative Principle, 1928.