Conservative and Labour figures reacted cautiously to the exit poll predicting Theresa May could have lost her overall majority.

David Cameron was prescient in his assertion that last year’s UK referendum on EU membership would ‘unleash demons of which ye know not.’ His remark reminds Josephine Fenton of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’

Downing Street was forced to defend its top spin doctor yesterday after he raised Leveson press reforms in a telephone call to the editor of a national newspaper about an unfavourable story it was planning to run.