A hung parliament is the result of the snap general election, leaving confusion as to how the next government will be formed and which party will drive Brexit negotiations.
At the time of writing exit but a few seats need to be declared, but regardless of the result no political party will have the numbers to make up the 326 seats needed to form a majority government.
Currently, the Conservatives hold 317 seats, Labour won 261, and the Liberal Democrats have 12 seats, and the Scottish National Party hold 35 seats, and the Democratic Unionist Party has 10.
The outside alternative could be a minority Labour party formed out of alliances with other political parties.
The result is a shock for the Tories and raises the question of Theresa May’s leadership and position as Prime Minister.
However, for the technology industry, if the Tories stay in power and make a coalition deal, little major change can be expected. The Conservatives will keep their pledge to address “fast changing technology” such as the development of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and the Fintech sub-sector, as well as tackle the issues of cyber security that threaten Britain’s technology industry.
“For the sake of our economy and our society, we need to harness the power of fast-changing technology, while ensuring that our security and personal privacy – and the welfare of children and younger people – are protected,” the Tory manifesto said.
And it is likely that the commitments to improving the UK’s fibre and mobile broadband and to integrating digital technology in the public sector will not likely be taken off the table through the foundation of a coalition government.
For Brexit negotiations, a weaker Tory party could make getting Britain a good deal when it leaves the European Union a challenging prospect, which in turn will raise questions over issues such as freedom of movement and membership of the digital single market.
Time will tell if the Tories make a deal to form a coalition and if it wreaks chaos or allows the Conservative government to get back to business as usual with its manifesto.
Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector
Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…
Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…
Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…
Explore the future of work with the Silicon In Focus Podcast. Discover how AI is…
Executive hits out at the DoJ's “staggering proposal” to force Google to sell off its…