QUESTION

ANSWER

Situation

To London now - Thursday's election was disastrous for Britain's ruling Conservative Party. Theresa May has now accepted the resignation of her two chiefs of staff in an attempt to cling to power. And she is trying to ___________________________ in Northern Ireland to _________________________ in Parliament to rule. And there's the small matter of ___________________, which begin later this month.

Current political landscape in the U.K.

Three words, Lulu - wreckage, chaos and uncertainty.

l The ____________________ is basically May, as you remember, she called ______________________ back in April. She ends up instead of building up a big majority, she actually loses her majority in Parliament. It's clearly threatened her own rule. And it's basically seen as a staggering self-inflicted wound.

l The ________________ is you can almost feel the political plates shifting day by day here. You've got a number of politicians who are jockeying for position, trying to influence what kind of Brexit the U.K. actually pushes for. And then obviously, people are already eyeing a run to take over the party and the prime minister's job.

l The _____________________ is, when does May go?

Political prospects

Yeah, we are and the question is when. I mean, nobody ultimately knows. You know, after ___________________________ and ______________________, there's certainly no such thing as certainty in British politics anymore.

l Today, George Osborne - he's the former treasury secretary - he called May ____________________________.

l A Conservative MP said perhaps the Conservative Party conference could have a meeting this summer to __________________________ her but she could ________________. And one of the reasons is what you just mentioned.

l The Brexit negotiations are starting Monday, a week from now. Who wants to _____________________ going into such an incredibly difficult and such an incredibly important negotiation? The other thing is, does anybody want her job right now? Maybe, you know, the political calculation is to let her frankly muck around her administration, muck around in the Brexit negotiations, wait till - candidly, she probably has a lot of problems - and then ________ her.

Brexit 

l Well, you know, all along, Lulu, May was pushing for what she called basically ________________ with the EU, what some people call ___________. It would mean leaving the gigantic single market - which is very beneficial to the United Kingdom - of these 27 other states in the European Union. And this weekend, some Conservative Parliament members are saying we want _____________________. We want to put U.K. ____________, focus on _____________________________________.

l And so it looks like it could be considerably _________ for May to push through this hard-line deal. And the terms of Brexit are just really unclear right now. The Brits, of course, it's very important to remember that she's also going into these negotiations in _____________________ than she was back in Wednesday when she had a larger majority in Parliament.

May's government 

Well, she's trying - she's reached out to the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. She's trying to ________________ where they would support the Tories, the Conservative Party, on big issues like ______________________. But it's a very small party, and now they have a ton of leverage over her because they're the only party in Parliament that they'll - that is willing to work with her. So going ahead, it looks also - __________________ very ________________ government.