Hung parliament: World press reacts to May's 'disastrous gamble'

Journalists around the world have reacted with as much shock as their UK counterparts to the general election result.

Italy's La Repubblica declared Theresa May's "gamble" to have failed as she lost her majority and was forced to negotiate a "fragile" coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party.

Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany manages two puns in English, headlining its leader on the election result: "Mayday", while another piece renames the Prime Minister: "Theresa Maybe."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It also tells readers this was a "vote against a hard Brexit" and says: "The voters of the United Kingdom are insecure, angry and upset."

Attention across the Atlantic is still preoccupied with former FBI boss James Comey's testimony to Congress about President Donald Trump, but the New York Times finds time to cover the election results – with some bemusement.

It calls the vote an "extraordinary gamble" that "backfired", adding: "Clearly, Britons confounded expectations and the betting markets once again."

The Washington Post believes it was a "disastrous gamble on the future of Britain" and says May has paid the price for a "lack of grace in public appearances… made worse by the whiff of dishonesty".

The PM is "hanging by a thread", it adds, with her promises of stability "looking more like delusions". The only thing certain about the UK's future "is uncertainty itself", it concludes.

In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald says May made the "same miscalculation" as her Aussie counterpart Malcolm Turnbull, who last year also went to the polls seeking a stronger mandate and ended up with a weaker one.

Both leaders "chronically" underestimated their opponents and "assumed their innate superiority would shine through", says the paper.

Even before the election, the Herald was predicting bad things for the Tories, saying two days ago that the woman once described as the new Iron Lady was "rusting faster than a badly painted gate in a rainstorm".