LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, smarting from a humbling snap election defeat that cost her Conservative Party its governing majority, said on Friday (June 9) that her party would stay in power by forming a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.

“What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and the ability to provide that certainty, by commanding a majority in the House of Commons,” Mrs May said outside No 10 Downing Street.

“As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies, in the Democratic Unionist Party in particular.”

She said both parties have enjoyed a “strong relationship” over many years and this gave her the confidence that they would be able to work together.

Mrs May had called an election three years early in the hope of winning a stronger mandate as Britain prepares for two years of negotiations over its withdrawal from the European Union (EU), but voters did not reward that gamble.

Instead, they produced a hung Parliament — one in which no party has an outright majority in the 650-seat House of Commons.

Sterling tumbled as much as 2.5 per cent on the result while the FTSE share index opened higher. The pound hit an eight-week low against the dollar and its lowest levels in seven months versus the euro.

The fractured voting — which saw strong gains by the largest opposition party, Labour, and modest gains by a smaller party, the centrist Liberal Democrats — was a further indication of stark political divisions in Britain, days before formal negotiations over withdrawal from the EU are scheduled to begin in Brussels.

The Conservatives lost 12 seats in the election, while the DUP won 10. With the 318 Conservative seats plus the DUP seats, Mrs May would have 328 votes — just above the 326 needed for a majority.

EU leaders expressed fears that Mrs May’s shock loss of her majority would delay the Brexit talks, due to begin on June 19, and so raise the risk of negotiations failing.

Her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn urged Mrs May to step down, saying that her attempt to win a bigger mandate had backfired.

Labour won 261 seats, with analysis suggesting the party had benefited from a strong turnout among young voters.

“The mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence,” Mr Corbyn said. “I would have thought that’s enough to go, actually, and make way for a government that will be truly representative of all of the people of this country.”

But Mrs May, facing scorn for running a lacklustre campaign, was determined to hang on. Just after noon, she was driven the short distance from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen Elizabeth for permission to form a government - a formality under the British system.

The DUP, a historically Protestant party that seeks to maintain Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, has close ties with the Conservatives, and it supported Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

It was unclear what price the DUP might exact for its support. But DUP leader Arlene Foster is expected to seek concessions as well as senior positions in a new government in exchange for providing the needed seats.

“I certainly think that there will be contact made over the weekend,” said Ms Foster said “but I think it is too soon to talk about what we’re going to do.”

There is a precedent for this situation: The Ulster Unionist Party, another faction from Northern Ireland, helped shore up the government of Mr John Major, a Conservative prime minister, from 1992 to 1997.

In some respects, the election on Thursday also resembled the one in 2010, when the Conservatives won the most seats in a general election but did not have a majority of seats. They formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

In a coalition government, the junior partner takes ministerial seats, is part of day-to-day decisions by the cabinet and shares a platform with the governing party.

In a minority government, in contrast, a smaller party agrees to support the governing party in votes on legislation, but it would not necessarily be part of the leadership.

Whatever emerges will most likely be more fragile than the coalition formed in 2010 by Mr David Cameron, Mrs May’s predecessor as prime minister, which lasted for five years.

And even if Mrs May were to survive in the medium term, her authority has been badly damaged. She is certain to face demands from lawmakers in her own party that she change her leadership style and consult more widely.

Mr Nigel Evans, a senior Conservative lawmaker, blamed the party’s so-called manifesto over which Mrs May had to reverse course within days, for the election failure.

Mr Evans suggested that divisive proposals on the financing of long-term care for older adults — from which Mrs May had to backtrack — would not have been included in the manifesto if Mrs May had consulted more widely.

“We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we shot ourselves in the head,” he told the BBC.

Paradoxically, the Conservative Party actually increased its share of the total vote from 2015 — when it won a commanding majority in Parliament — but not by enough in important constituencies. Under Britain’s first-past-the-post system, what matters is not a party’s share of the overall vote, but simply who places first in any given constituency.

The share of the vote captured by Labour on Thursday — 40 per cent — was significantly higher than what many parties that have formed governments in the past have won.

Analysts cautioned that this may reflect the volatility of British politics in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and that it might not point to a long-lasting revival in the fortunes of the two main parties.

In particular, the Conservatives and Labour have benefited from the collapse of votes for the right-wing, populist UK Independence Party, and the failure of the centrist Liberal Democrats to make a breakthrough.

“Two-party politics in the 1950s and 1960s was supported by an intellectual, cultural, infrastructure of class alignment and partisan alignment,” said Professor Philip Cowley, an expert in politics at Queen Mary, University of London. “These parties were class-based, people felt strongly affiliated to them, they voted for the same party year in year out.”

That was not true this time, Prof Cowley noted, and by the time of the next election, votes could “churn again, back to another majority party or off to a minor party.” AGENCIES