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What's next as Britain heads for hung parliament

Bloomberg Published on Fri, Jun 09, 2017 / 12:09 PM GMT+8

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(June 9): Britain’s shock election result raises many questions about where the country goes from here as Brexit negotiations loom. They range from the future of Prime Minister Theresa May to what the split from the European Union will look like. Here are some of the most pertinent questions:

1. What exactly is a hung parliament?
When no single party has a majority of seats in the House of Commons. That’s what happened in 2010, when the Conservatives went on to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. The other option is to try to govern with a minority, relying on smaller parties to support legislation. It’s worth remembering that the total number of seats, for the purposes of calculating working majorities, is less than 650. The speaker and deputy speakers don’t vote and Sinn Fein, which won four seats in the last parliament, doesn’t take its seats, shrinking the number needed for a majority to less than 326.