The 2017 election: well, that was different!
Despite calling the election at the time of her choosing, when her party had a 20% lead in the polls, and for the explicit purpose of increasing her majority so her own back benchers couldn't keep arguing with her... Theresa May has just lost her majority. The government of the UK for the next five* years will be a minority, with the Conservatives getting things done through the support of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
(*Or however long before she feels like throwing another election.)
Historically, the other Northern Irish party, Sinn Féin, have practiced abstentionism, refusing to actually show up to a parliament they consider to not be the actual rulers of Northern Ireland. Whether that will continue now that their opponents are part of the government remains to be seen. (The abstentionism policy does make the numbers slightly less dire for Theresa May - SF have seven seats, so she only needs 322 votes to have an effective majority.)
This is a stunning result for Jeremy Corbyn's newly left-wing Labour Party, with a massive increase in seats (and they only had 2.4% fewer votes than the Tories). It's actually even worse than it looks for the Conservatives - they came out 12 seats down, but gained 12 in Scotland, taking them from the Scottish National Party (Labour also got 6 at the SNP's expense). That means that in England and Wales, Theresa May managed to lose 24 seats - many of them to Labour.
All in all, Mrs May must be feeling a bit under the weather. So at
celebestel's suggestion, I sent her something to make her feel better:
