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10th Jun 2017

The opening to BBC Newsnight’s election special was a superb piece of TV

Poor Theresa.

Conor Heneghan

The opening segment of Newsnight on the BBC on Friday night brilliantly captured what a disaster the general election proved to be for Theresa May.

“I wanted to achieve a large majority but that was not the result that we secured and I’m sorry.”

It’s been a tough couple of days for Theresa May.

Sure she’s still Prime Minister and her conservative party gained more seats than any other in the general election, but there’s no escaping the fact that it proved to be something of a disaster on her part.

Having set out to achieve a conservative majority, May is now seeking to form an unlikely alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in a minority government, but her personal credibility has taken a massive blow from which she will do well to recover.

BBC Newsnight summed up May’s fortunes in the opening segment of their election special on Friday night, with Johnny Cash’s version of ‘Hurt’ providing the most fitting of soundtracks in the background as several commentators spoke of the catastrophe the election had been from May’s perspective.

Just as they did with Donald Trump’s inauguration back in January, they did a damn good job of it too.

This is well worth a couple of minutes of your time.