Skip to main content

What Is a Hung Parliament? What Does It Mean for Britain? - The New York Times

posted onJune 9, 2017
>

Article snippet: What seemed like a long shot at the start of have lost it instead. That makes it a hung Parliament. Here is what that means. What is a hung Parliament? A hung Parliament occurs when no party has won a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. That means that no party has a clear and outright mandate to form the new government. Prime Minister Theresa May called for this general election in April — three years early — because she thought her Conservative Party would win handily. It did not. The Conservatives previously had a majority of 331 seats in the House of Commons. They needed to win at least 326. They are projected to have won 319. Who is the prime minister? Mrs. May is still the prime minister. But her position has now become very precarious. If she can retain the support of her own party, she will have the right to remain in office until the first meeting of the new Parliament, according to the Cabinet Manual, which lays out the rules and norms of the British government. The new Parliament is expected to meet early next week. What happens then? Mrs. May will try to shore up support from lawmakers, which means wooing other parties in the hope of creating a power-sharing alliance that will command at least 326 seats. That could mean a coalition government, in which other parties get some seats in the cabinet, or more likely it could mean a “confidence and supply” arrangement, in which smaller parties agree to support Mrs. May in exchange for her support... Link to the full article to read more

Emotional score for this article