BRITISH ELECTION
TONY LEON: Restive voters pull rug from under the feet of complacent potentates
It’s the memes wot won it. This shorthand definition of an image, video or cartoon — usually humorous and shared rapidly by internet users — is one of many explanations for the extraordinary results posted in Thursday’s British general election. Bundled off the campaign just three days before the poll because of a series of car crash interviews, the Labour Party’s Dianne Abbott coined the best and, as events would prove, the most accurate of them when the snap election was called seven weeks ago by Prime Minister Theresa May. Her comment back then — "June means the end of May" — quickly went viral. When the final result was announced on Friday, Britain was still being led, barely, by May, who called the election to cement her authority and increase her majority. She landed up with neither. Having warned on the eve of poll that a loss of "just six seats" would mean a defeat, she lost a dozen MPs and was pilloried in her once adoring press as a broken-backed, caretaker leader whose de...
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