History As It Happens 2: Understanding the Results of the UK Election

We dissect the results of the dramatic June 8th election in Great Britain – party by party and region by region – in order to understand why the country ended up with a hung parliament and a fragile, tenuous government. The Conservative prime minister hangs on by the skin of her teeth, her party buffeted by record-smashing youth turnout and an increasing consolidation of the opposition under the Labour banner. Scotland’s independence movement faces a setback; peace in Northern Ireland faces a new threat; a “soft” Brexit becomes more likely; and most significantly of all for Western democracies, the age of the Thatcher-Blair consensus comes to an end.