And the winner is . . .

I assume that Prime Minister Theresa May will have big regrets about her snap elections. She almost desperately wanted a large majority in the House of Commons to show extensive public support and obtain a strong mandate for her Brexit strategy. After counting the votes, the dreamed majority was vaporized and the Tories are still the largest but without the overall desired power in the House.

Labour won but not enough to become the largest party so is still doomed to play the opposition role. Jeremy Corbyn was hailed as the man who brought Labour back on track but despite the strong campaign, his starting position was to weak to really be able to challenge the Conservatives for their leadership. Labour with Corbyn still hangs to much onto classic ideals. The party has been lucky that younger voters did not have an alternative. The Greens and LibDems are way too small to have serious impact so they only could not vote at all or choose strategically for Labour. 

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), also overplayed her hand and saw to her stunning surprise that the Scots lost appetite to separate themselves from a Brexited-UK and  voters ran towards both the Tories and Labour. Although the last referendum was just a narrow "stay" victory, it was in the light of England still a member of the EU. Scotland would have gained more independent power in the EU but would still be close friends to its EU-neighbour England. Now the UK leaves the EU, the Scots obviously prefer a stay in the UK instead of a standalone position in the EU.

The LibDems lost severely and their leader, Nick Clegg, former deputy Prime Minister, even lost his seat in the House. They knew they had to pay the price for joining the Tories in a coalition government, but this slaughter was a bit unexpected. 

The TKIP, the anti-EU loudmouths of former leader Nigel Farage who as a tiny tiny minority was able to mobilize Brexit, was shred into pieces, zero seats in the House, and will most likely not overcome this loss ever again.

Every party will count their blessings and no doubt many arguments will pop up to explain the shallow outcome of a hung parliament. Of course the awful terrorist attacks are pointed to as the major disturbance in these elections and to some extent they are. However, lets be honest, terrorists are unfortunately getting too common to ignore them in a political arena. Additionally the whole meaning of Brexit was to close the UK borders in an attempt to minimize terrorist attacks and economic impact of a steady flow of immigration. The attacks, performed by people of which half of them have a British passport, proved that current immigration is only part of the problem. It's the "handling" of a multi-cultural society which  will never go away anymore. This world has become too small for that.

So, there we are. This 2017 UK general election delivered no real winners at all. It showed painfully that the current UK government is on its own. Internally with a damaged PM Theresa May and scattered political landscape with no real majorities. And internationally because May's Brexit strategy obviously did not gather supporting power from the people and leaves May with a weak negotiation position.

But as history shows, Brits will not easily admit wrong decisions so Brexit will continue, whatever the costs.

Rule, Britannia!

(thanks to Marian Kamensky for the awesome cartoon)