This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. British Prime Minister Theresa May

thought she would consolidate the Conservative Party's hold on Parliament.

Instead, she lost the party's majority.

Now with Brexit negotiations just days away,

Cato's Ryan Bourne says the socialist-friendly elements

of British politics are gaining ground.

Theresa May made a mistake, is that fair to say? Well, it was an extraordinary election result and one that nobody saw coming. I'd be lying if I suggested

that I thought it was wrong for her to call the election in the first place. It

looked like she was going to win an absolute landslide. It looked like she

needed that mandate to get Brexit through and it also

looked like she needed the time that she'd have gained from entering a new parliament

at a five-year period to deliver on that Brexit. So I think it was the right decision to

to call an election in the first place. Of course in hindsight looking back what has

actually happened is she ran a pretty dreadful campaign. The Tory Manifesto was panned by all sides. Jeremy Corbyn has proved a much more effective

campaigner than many of us realized. It looks as if the UKIP vote, which you'd have imagined would have been all in favour of Brexit,

has gone in part to labour, to a large extent, and young voters who traditionally don't come out and vote seem to have been enthused by some of

Jeremy Corbyn's policies and by all accounts have come out in droves.

So you factor all of those things in and we've got a situation where even though Theresa May has

increased the Conservative vote share by raising the number of votes they've got

in some of these Northern working class seats, overall she's lost seat, she's

lost her majority and now she's going to be reliant on the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland in order to form a majority government, an unstable one at that.

What does it mean that she has to depend on the Democratic Unionist Party?

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