Shock exit poll predicts United Kingdom on track for hung parliament

Brexit negotiations will be more hard for British Prime Minister Theresa May following the general election results, a think-tank expert said Friday.

The pound fell sharply after Britain's election saw the Conservatives lose their majority in parliament, raising questions about the next government's ability to lead the talks to leave the European Union. Exit polls predicted the Conservative Party would win 318 seats in Britain's 650-seat Parliament and the left-wing opposition Labour Party 267 - a race with no clear victor. To avoid any real debate about the issues Britain faces - in particular, the reality of Brexit - she had to make the election about nothing at all.

Promising to move toward a Brexit deal, enabling Britain to exit the European Union, May said the new government would "be able to work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom". "Over the next five years build a country in which no one and no community is left behind, a country in which prosperity and opportunity are shared across this United Kingdom". But she was forced into an alliance with a small party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party, just to stay in power.

Neither the Conservatives or the opposition Labour Party were able to reach the 326 seats required for an absolute majority government. The surprising shift in the British political landscape leaves the country with no clear majority party. Their priority will be to get the best deal for Northern Ireland. Before May went through the largely symbolic process of seeking the queen's approval for the new government, DUP leader Arlene Foster had told British media that it would be "difficult for (May) to survive" and that "it is too soon to talk about what we're going to do".

But Elmar Brok, a German conservative and the European Parliament's top Brexit expert, told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper that the talks would now be more complicated. "Theresa May underestimated our party and she underestimated you".

If all this uncertainty weren't enough, the Labour Party, which won 261 seats in the election, has its own divisions to deal with.

Another panelist, Williams, said that Theresa May made a mistake when she called for a snap election because the prime minister had a wrong expectation about winning the election.

May called the early election in April, when opinion polls suggested she was set for a sweeping win.

But her campaign unravelled after a major policy U-turn on care for the elderly, while Corbyn's old-school socialist platform and more impassioned campaigning style won wider support than anyone had foreseen. And the relationship between the Conservatives and its minority government partner, the Democratic Unionist Party, also remains unclear.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose energetic campaign defied predictions of a crushing defeat, told May to quit, saying she had "lost votes, lost support and lost confidence". Business leaders and economists say any return of a frontier would be devastating to the economies of Ireland and Northern Ireland because they are so entwined.

"I can still be prime minister", Corbyn said. That would make the course of Brexit even harder to predict.

Labour had 262, up from 229, and the Scottish National Party 35, a loss of about 20 seats that complicates the party's plans to push for independence. "It is also important for the prospect of successful Brexit negotiations that we have certainty in the political system", she added in a statement.

With the DUP providing the Conservatives a narrow, but crucial, majority in Parliament, it could have an outsized influence. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka who joined Juncker at the news conference in Prague noted sharply that in almost a year after the U.K.'s Brexit referendum, the British were still not ready to negotiate their departure.