UK Labour Leader Corbyn: 'I Can Still Be Prime Minister'

He said it was impossible to predict whether she would still be prime minister at the end of the year.

May earlier on Saturday lost her two closest aides as she struggled to reassert her leadership after a crushing election setback.

That calculation backfired spectacularly on Thursday as voters stripped the Conservatives of their parliamentary majority.

May was under pressure to fire her most senior advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, blamed by many Conservatives for steering the election campaign toward disaster.

Timothy and Hill had worked for May when she was interior minister, before she became premier in July a year ago in the chaotic days that followed the Brexit vote.

May is preparing to name the rest of her cabinet, after revealing Friday that her five most senior ministers would stay in their posts. Since the election, most of the members of May's cabinet have kept quiet on the issue of her future, adding to speculation that her days as prime minister are numbered.

Ruth Davidson, the Conservative leader in Scotland, said she had asked May for assurances that there would be no attack on gay rights after a deal with the DUP.

That means it will support a Conservative minority government on key votes in parliament without a formal coalition deal. Dudley North (won by Labour by 22), Newcastle-under-Lyme (won by 30), Crewe and Nantwich (won by 48) and Canterbury (won by 187) would have allowed PM May to form a government without the help of the DUP.

A deal between the government and the DUP could also unsettle the precarious balance between Northern Ireland's British loyalist and Irish nationalist parties.

That the result of the British election has come as a shock to Theresa May is stating the obvious, but what perhaps may not be as obvious is the underlying message it has given to the Tories and its leadership. "Absolutely", Corbyn told Sunday Mirror newspaper in an interview.

The British pound tumbled on Friday against the USA dollar and the euro before stabilising, down 1.7 and 1.4 percent against the two currencies respectively. On Friday, May was expected to appoint a team that will take on one of the most demanding negotiations in British history.

According to her office, May confirmed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call that Britain was ready to begin Brexit negotiations "as planned in the next couple of weeks". "But we are nine days off from the Brexit talks starting", he told BBC Radio. She's then got to present a programme to Parliament.

Britain's largely pro-Conservative press questioned whether she could remain in power with the clock ticking on the two-year European Union divorce process.

The Conservatives won 318 seats, down from 331 in 2015 after the opposition Labour party under socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn scored hefty gains.

The party's manifesto made clear that it opposed the Conservatives' shelving of the pensions "triple lock" as well as the Tory pledge to take away winter fuel payments from wealthier pensioners.

May had repeatedly ruled out the need for a new election before changing her mind. The result is also perhaps the start of the revival of the Labour Party.

"We welcome this [DUP] commitment, which can provide the stability and certainty the whole country requires as we embark on Brexit and beyond", a Downing Street spokesman said.

The arrangement with the DUP will make governing easier, but it makes some Conservatives uneasy.

He urged May to "go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country".

If May is to succeed in delivering the wish of the 52% of voters who opted past year to take Britain out of the European Union, she must find a way to bridge the differences within her party to pass laws preparing for and enacting the departure.