Theresa May: 'I got us into this and I will get us out'

(Image credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

last updated 13 June 2017

Theresa May faced backbench Tory MPs last night in what was seen as a make-or-break meeting for her political future.

According to politicians present, the Prime Minister struck a conciliatory tone, apologising to those who had lost their seats, saying sorry "several times for making the call about the election" and adding "she would serve us as long as we want her".

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5.20am: With 34 seats still to declare, Sky News forecasts that the Conservatives will end up with between 315 and 321 MPs - not enough for a majority. Labour will have 260 to 266 MPs. The total number of "progressive" MPs, including Labour, SNP, Lib Dem, Green and Plaid Cymru members, is likely to fall just short of the Conservative tally - in part because Sinn Fein will not take up its six seats. The Conservatives are likely to seek the support of the Democratic Unionist Party, which could make a "frictionless" post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the Republic a precondition of their backing.

4.55am: Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary and a close ally of Theresa May, has survived two recounts to retain her seat in Hastings. Talk in both the BBC and Sky studios immediately turns to the leadership question: Rudd is seen as a potential successor to the Prime Minister. "May is facing a mounting backlash over her 'catastrophic' election campaign," says the Daily Telegraph. "Senior Conservatives said this morning that she had made 'fundamental strategic errors' and said that her closest aides should be 'banished' from Downing Street."

4.20am: Alex Salmond, the former leader of the SNP, has been defeated by the Conservatives in Gordon. While Theresa May has had a terrible night in England, her party has fared better in Scotland, where it is led by Ruth Davidson. "It's a historic night for the Scottish Conservatives," she says. "We haven't taken multiple seats here for more than 20 years." But she brushes off the suggestion that she might replace May. "I already lead the Scottish Conservative party," she says. "If I wanted to be in the United Kingdom parliament, I would have stood in the United Kingdom in this election." But her main message is about independence: the SNP's plan for a second referendum is dead, she says.

3.25am: Ten minutes after Jeremy Corbyn called for her resignation, Theresa May takes the stage in Maidenhead to hear her constituency result. She holds her seat, one of the safest in the country, and then makes her pitch to keep the top job. "We have yet to see the full picture emerging," she says. "Votes are still being counted, but at this time, more than anything else, what this country needs is a period of stability." If the Conservatives have won the most seats and probably the most votes then it will be encumbent on us to ensure that we have that period of stability, and that is exactly what we will do."

3.15am: Having retained his Islington North constituency, Jeremy Corbyn calls on Theresa May to step down. "Politics has changed, and politics isn't going back into the box where it was before," he says. "People have said they've had quite enough of austerity politics. They've said they've had quite enough of cuts in public expenditure, underfunding our health service, underfunding our schools and our education service and not giving our young people the chance they deserve in our society." He pledged to put the policies outlined in the Labour manifesto before parliament.

3.05am: Both the BBC and Sky News have updated their electoral projections, based on the exit poll and the results that have come in so far. Both add a few seats to the Conservative column: the BBC now predicts that Theresa May's party will win 322 seats, and Sky says 318. In theory, 326 seats are needed for a majority, but since Gerry Adams has confirmed that Sinn Fein will not take its seats, in practice the magic number is 323. The Conservatives may fall agonisingly short.

2.50am: Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, has lost Sheffield Hallam, where Labour's Jared O Mara beat him by 2,000 votes. "I never shirked from political battles," he said, after hearing the result. "I always sought to stand by the liberal values I believe in." He said the next parliament would face "the excruciating task of trying to assemble a sensible government" and would have to execute the "agonising" task of negotiating Brexit. "Voters tell pollsters they want politician to put nation before party," says Peter Kellner, "and Nick Clegg did that massively in 2010," when he took his party into coalition with the Conservatives.

2am: Alastair Campbell, who was Tony Blair's director of communications, tells ITV News that "Brexit cannot go ahead under the current timetable". Negotiations with the EU are due to begin in ten days, but it is far from certain that the UK will have a government in place by then. Nigel Farage says it was a "huge mistake to put Theresa May, a Remainer, in charge of Brexit, and says he may have "no choice" but to make yet another comeback as Ukip leader. "We may well be looking down the barrel of a second referendum," he tells the BBC.

1.45am: Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, says "Theresa May's authority has been undermined by this election". Describing her as "a damaged Prime Minister whose reputation may never recover", he accused her of failing to present voters with a positive vision for government. "It's astonishing what this does for the internal dynamics of the Labour party, says Amol Rajan's, the BBC's media editor. Many Labour MP's on the anti-Corbyn wing of the party now find themselves unexpectedly retaining their seats, thanks, it would seem, to Corbyn's unexpected popularity.

1.40am: "Hope has triumphed over fear," says Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general. "Labour hopes to form a government," she adds, before dodging questions about whether a minority Labour government could negotiate a successful Brexit. Talks led by Labour, possibly with the support of the SNP, "would completely open up, reshape and change any negotiations over Brexit", says the BBC's Andrew Marr.

1.20am: "The SNP are losing ground quite substantially north of the border," says Professor John Curtice, as Labour gain Rutherglen and Hamilton West from the Scottish Nationalists. The Conservatives increased their share of the vote by nearly six per cent, but a nine per cent fall in the SNP's vote handed the seat to Labour. Curtice suggests that the result reinforces the exit poll's forecast that 20 or more Scottish seats will change hands.

12.40am: HuffPost UK's Paul Waugh says Labour expect to win in Kensington and Chelsea, previously one of the safest Conservative seat in the country - but also an area that voted heavily to stay in the EU. It's full of "EU-loving citizens of nowhere", says ITV's Robert Peston. The theme of both the results and the rumours seems to be that the Conservative are outperforming the exit poll in northern England, while Labour outperform it in the south.

12.30am: As results trickle in, thoughts turn to what happens next. "Former chancellor George Osborne, who was sacked by Mrs May last year, said the result would be 'completely catastrophic' for the Tories," reports Sky News. He told the broadcaster that it's "difficult to see, if these numbers are correct, how they would put together the coalition to remain in office". Brexit negotiations begin in ten days, Andrew Marr points out on the BBC, "but what happens if there is no Prime Minister who commands a majority in the House of Commons to have those negotiations with? There may be no choice but to delay that, and it may be a very long time before we have a prime minister with a Brexit plan."

12.15am, 9 June: Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, tells the BBC that Labour "may form the next government" - but she rules out a coalition. "Either the Conservatives will form a minority government," she says, "or Labour will form a minority government." But Ken Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor, casts doubt on the exit poll's "very complicated methodology" and predicts that his party will win a slim majority. "The worst possible outcome would be a hung parliament," he says.

11.45pm: Labour hold Sunderland Central, but for a third time the Conservatives have outperformed the exit poll. But, says pollster Peter Kellner, if Amber Rudd's Hastings seat is at risk, then Labour have done much better there than the poll predicts. The early signs are "contradictory", he says. What is clear is that the Ukip vote has collapsed, and has gone mostly to the Conservatives. There are rumours too, the BBC reports, that Nick Clegg may have lost his Sheffield Hallam seat.

11.30pm: Already the talk of a leadership challenge against Theresa May has begun. "She will be hugely weakened in the biggest negotiation that any Prime Minister has had to undertake," says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. "If, indeed, she survives long enough to undertake it – which is by no means certain if she does worse than David Cameron managed to do against Ed Miliband. She will have taken a position of strength and blown it."