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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, spent the week confronting the consequences of the general election that she had called to bring ‘stability and certainty for the future’. It had instead surprisingly left the Conservatives with no overall majority. They won 318 seats (a loss of 13) and Labour 262 (a gain of 30). The Scottish National Party won 35 (a loss of 21), with the Conservatives gaining 12 extra seats in Scotland, even capturing Stirling. Labour won an extra five seats in Scotland. Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, lost his seat, as did Alex Salmond. Nick Clegg, the former Lib-Dem leader, lost his seat, but Sir Vince Cable won back Twickenham. Paul Nuttall resigned as leader of Ukip, the collapse of whose vote left the Tories with a total of 13,667,213 votes (42.4 per cent) and Labour 12,874,985 (40 per cent). Labour’s organisation among students led to its winning seats such as Canterbury by 187 votes and Kensington, after three recounts, by 20.
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