Labour defy the odds to humiliate Tories

THE decision by British Prime Minister Theresa May, reached during a walking holiday in Wales, to set aside assurances that she would not call an early election, has turned out to be one of the most disastrous in modern European politics.

It trumps David Cameron’s hostage-to-fortune blunder when he promised a referendum on EU membership. The May election result — it will always be so described — unexpectedly and all of a sudden, makes Brexit seem less than certain or at least far more complicated than it might have been. A fraught situation has been needlessly exacerbated.

This rattle-the-establishment outcome is layered with the deepest, darkest ironies. Ms May dressed her power grab as an opportunity to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations but she achieved the very opposite. The Tories’ defeat — it is nothing else no matter how they harrumph and bleat — surpasses even the humiliation inflicted on Fianna Fáil in 2011, when they lost almost 60 deputies. Ms May’s decision to go to the country — described as an attempted coup by some of her opponents — has profoundly weakened her and her anti-EU courtiers. The hubris so alive in today’s Conservative Party has been punished; even the most robust of their pretend Galahads will struggle to find the silver lining in this dark cloud.