Election 2017: What Just Happened? Panorama

A Prime Minister fighting for her political life. I think she's in a

lot of trouble. I think she's a dead woman walking. How long she stays on

death row? Who knows. Ready and waiting to take power, a man who

just weeks ago was dismissed as unelectable. It is seismic. It will

be recorded as such. Labour found its heart and soul again. Britain's

approach to Brexit in the balance. They should remember, they have seen

Tory leader after Tory leader after Tory leader try the Brexit line and

fail. All this the consequence of an election almost everyone believed

Theresa May would win and win big. My phone was ringing off the hook

with people telling me what have we done, this is going down like a

bucket of cold sick on the doorstep. This is the story what have really

happened. At 7. 30am, Monday morning. People

were standing there with freshly blow dried hair and fresh Chanel

suits on ready to roll, I thought, we're on. Theresa May would have

thought to herself, this isn't a huge gamble, because she's not a

known risk taker. I have just chaired a meeting of the Kabul,

where we agreed -- of the Cabinet, where we agreed the Government

should call a general election. It will be a choice between strong and

stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your Prime

Minister, or weak and unstable coalition Government, led by Jeremy

Corbyn. This is something that looks pretty set. She would be returning

back to the House of Commons with an increased majority. But people can

take you by surprise in an election. You're joking. Not another one! Oh,

for God's sake, I can't honestly - I can't stand this. There's too much

politics going on at the moment. Why does she need to do it. Why does she

need to do it, asked Brenda in Bristol. Why indeed. What is it

about the recent 20% opinion poll that first attracted you to the idea

of a general election? I've taken this decision, and I took it

reluctantly. I've thought about, it as I said yesterday, when I was -

before Easter I had the opportunity to really take some time out to

think about this - You can't resist this Prime Minister, we're going to

win, win big. We're going to crush the saboteurs, defeat the Labour

Party. Let's get on with it. Look, Nick, every election has a risk. How

risky could it be against Jeremy Corbyn? They would have thought this

is a walkover. Jeremy Corbyn surely wasn't electable. Jeremy Corbyn

looked like someone who couldn't be the Prime Minister, who had no

credible economic policies and indeed, was associated with a team

that looked like the hard left. Can't perform in front of the media.

They thought they were home and dry. And they weren't the only ones. Many

in Jeremy Corbyn's own party thought he'd be a disaster. This is Hove,

near Brighton. Do you think you'll be voting for me? I would probably

vote for you, but not necessarily the for the other guy, that's in

charge. You mean Jeremy? Jeremy Corbyn. Panorama's been following

three Labour candidates in three key marginals. Peter Kyle was the MP for

Hove when this election was called. His majority just 1200 votes. He was

the only Labour MP in the south-east outside London. There's no doubt

that Jeremy has been a degree on this campaign. He's coming up on

door after door after door. It's a really strange position to be in, as

a candidate, because, you know, I'm proud of Labour, but I realise that

if I associate myself with Jeremy, then we're dead here. To keep his

hopes alive, Peter Kyle was telling voter in Hove that he'd fight

against a hard Brexit. In the EU referendum this area voted 70% in

favour of Remain. This is not a community that just rolls over

because Theresa May stamps her feet and says, "I want to have a stronger

mandate to negotiate Brexit with." This is an incredibly special

community that is thinking very carefully about its own voice and

what is in its own best interests. It's up to us to use the power of

the ballot box to change our society. That is what this election

is about. CHEERING

The young had been outvoted in the EU referendum, were determined their

voice would be heard this time. This election is about you. They were

saying oh, yeah, big crowds, but you're talking to the converted. The

young people, yeah, they might be - but they'll never turn out. If you

looked at those crowds, they comprised large numbers of young

people. Unbelievable enthusiasm. I thought we have a phenomenon here

that people have never seen before. I think it's going to happen.

Theresa May's team was so convinced she was a winner and Corbyn a loser

they planned a campaign all about her. It's about having a strong and

stable Government. Strong and stable leadership. A strong and stable

Government. In a way it felt very Trump like in some respects. Because

Donald Trump, the whole campaign was not about the Republicans, it was

about him. This campaign wasn't about the Conservative Party, it was

about Theresa May. Who will lead Britain through Brexit and beyond?

Will it be me and my team, showing the strong and stable leadership

that our country needs? Or will it be Jeremy Corbyn? Prime Ministers

may get to choose the date of an election, but they don't get to

choose what that election is about, no matter how many times they keep

parroting the same slogan. Theresa May wanted the electorate to believe

the choice was between her and Jeremy Corbyn, as to who negotiated

Brexit. But the Labour leader had other ideas. After seven years of

austerity, of spending cuts, of squeezed incomes, he believed the

choice was really between change and more of the same. Jeremy! Corbyn's

vision for change was summed up in his little red book. It's a

blueprint of what Britain could be and a pledge of the difference a

Labour Government can and will make. Labour pledged to spend more, a

whole lot more, promising something for everyone. More for the NHS and

schools, more pay for public workers, more cash to scrap student

fees. One thing there was less of - caution. I was overjoyed that here

was not only a manifesto, but a leadership that believed in it and

could passionately deliver it. To most people didn't it simply say:

Enough of austerity? Yeah, absolutely that was the essence of

it. We're not having five more years of austerity. We're going to give

you an alternative. We're going to make your life better, we're on your

side. Derby north, a Midlands marginal Labour had to win. Jeremy

Corbyn's friend Chris Williamson was the party's candidate. This is the

best Labour manifesto since 1945. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And for those who are saying, "Oh, it's extreme left-wing." I say

you're talking utter nonsense. Let's win Derby north, because the road to

Downing Street goes straight through the middle of Derby north. For Chris

Williamson, this fight was personal. He'd lost this seat in 2015 by just

41 votes. It made it the most marginal in England. As this

campaign began, the polls were as bad as the weather. It's depressing

to see the latest news broadcast talk about the opinion polls. But

that's not reflected by what I'm seeing. I've been knocking on doors

and the support for the Labour Party, the support, they genuinely

love Jeremy Corbyn, it's palpable. It was, ironically, the Tory

manifesto which lit the fire beneath Labour's campaign. Theresa May

believed she could reach the parts of the electorate which other Tory

leaders had long struggled to reach - working-class voters in the north

of England, the people who'd voted to leave the EU, who she now

believed would vote to leave Labour and leave Ukip too and do the almost

unthinkable and vote Tory. This is Halifax, a mill town in West

Yorkshire, a Labour seat for 30 years, but in this election, a key

Tory target. Theresa May parked her tanks on Labour's lawn, by launching

the Conservative manifesto here. It is a detailed programme for

Government, rooted in the hopes and aspirations of ordinary, working

people across the land. You can't block this. Tories in a mill in

Yorkshire, you couldn't make it up. We're just going to Mixenden, part

of north Halifax. Labour's Holly Lynch began this campaign worried

she might lose. This is good. Labour posters up. From the Labour Party.

Not interested? Really nice to meet you. Good luck. Thanks a lot. See

you later. Her majority just 428 votes seemed to be getting smaller

by the minute. How are you feeling about Labour this time? Not very

happy. Have you voted Labour before? Yes, all my life. OK. I'm 77 this

year. I'm going to vote Conservative because I just don't think Corbyn

will do right, with the exit. I don't think he's strong enough.

Holly Lynch was struggling to persuade Leave voters to stick with

Labour, but Theresa May's manifesto contained an unexpected present - a

Tory policy that was scaring voters, a new way of paying for care for the

elderly. We'd always known that adult social care is a long-term

problem, in fact, Theresa May would say often, politicians have been

ducking this problem for years. We can never fix the long-term problems

in hospitals and people at home without addressing it. But it's not

something you whack into a manifesto and try to brief overnight. The plan

was to make those people who needed to be cared for at home pay more, if

they own their own house. There was no cap on what they might be

charged. It was quickly dubbed "the dementia tax". Things like this

dementia tax, you know, home ennership scare me quite a bit. We

didn't buy a house to pass it on to the Government. We bought a house to

pass it on to her. Mabel. My phone was ringing off the hook with people

telling me, what have we done, this is going down like a bucket of coal

sick on the doorstep. The ground was shifting, as the Prime Minister

herself discovered on the doorstep. Theresa May appeared to have

pensioners in her sights and candidates of all parties were

finding people didn't like it. This time, I'm going to vote for you. Are

you? Well, she's threatening the winter fuel allowance and what's the

other one - The triple lock on pensions. Yeah. And then social care

as well. I'm afraid it confirmed the stereotypical idea that

Conservatives didn't care, were not compassionate, this is the tragedy

and the problem for Theresa that somehow we were the nasty party,

after all. What we needed to explain better was that we were dealing with

an unfairness, where some people are pagan awful lot, other people

weren't paying at all. Electorally, a disaster? Electorally, it took a

lot of explaining and clearly, there are lessons to learn from that. Four

days later, one ex-Tory MP headed to work, the new editor the London's

Evening Standard had a scoop. I got wind that there was going to be a

U-turn on the social care policy, which had been the centrepiece of

the manifesto just a couple of days earlier. So with just 45 minutes to

go, till our first edition, we got the story onto the front page and

delivered this headline. I think it destroyed the sense of momentum in

the Tory campaign, the sense that this was going to be a coronation.

It also, of course, undermind the central slogan - strong and stable -

you notice that basically disappeared then from the Tory

campaign. Theresa May tried to reassure people

they wouldn't lose all the value of their house. She promised there

would be a cap on social care payments. Did she say "we've

listened, we've learned, we've changed our minds"? Not exactly.

Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. Let's be clear, we have not

changed the principles that we set out in the manifesto.

Understandably voters were still confused. It is your mum you're

caring for? She has dementia. We don't know if she'll have to go into

a home, but do I have to sell her house? They were saying in one

thing, you know what I mean, you've got ?100,000, you don't have to sell

your house. The next day they are putting cap on it. But they are not

telling us what the cap is. Theresa May wanted the policy in her

manifesto to make sure Parliament couldn't block it.

If the public vote for this, then you can get it through the House of

Commons and the House of Lords, because politician cannot vote what

the public have voted for in a manifesto. That is the way to make

things happen. Then came an event which would stop the campaign in its

tracks. Greater Manchester Police said they

believed one man carried out the bombing at a pop concert in the

city. Killing 22, some of them children.

When the campaign resumed four days later, it brought renewed focus on

Jeremy Corbyn's past. The Tories had already been targeting him.

I've been involved in opposing anti-terror legislation, ever since

I wept into Parliament in 1983. This US-style attack ad was watched by

six million The aim to portray Jeremy Corbyn as

soft on terror. Are you refusing to condemn what the

IRA did? Jeremy? In any other election, that might

have been game over. Well, we thought it right, given he wanted to

be Prime Minister, to draw attention to his record and make sure he was

asked searching questions about his past sympathy with various terrorist

groups of one sort or another. In British politics and British society

generally, they don't like personalisation of politics in that

way. It was almost counterproductive for them. At the same time it turned

Jeremy into an underdog and British people quite like underdogs.

Jeremy Corbyn wasn't the only one with a record to defend. The Tories

were coming under mounting pressure over their record in Government. For

first time in my lifetime, the economy was scarcely mentioned by

the Conservatives in an election campaign. They didn't really talk

about the deficit. Perhaps they recognised more and more voters were

growing sick of the fact there seemed to be very little light at

the end of a long tunnel. There's a conversation I remember

with a teacher, who had voted for me in 2010 and 2015, and said, you know

I understood the need for a pay freeze for a few years to deal with

the deficit. You are asking for that to go on for ten to 11 years and

that is too much. That is something Jeremy Corbyn was able to tap into.

Even if he didn't know how much his own headline promise on childcare

would cost. So how much will it cost? I will

give you the figure in a moment. You don't know it? Um! You are logging

into your iPad here. You have announced a major policy and don't

know how much it will cost. Can I give you the exact figure in a

moment. Is this the issue with... Once again Corbyn had survived what

might have sunk another leader. Jeremy Corbyn's campaign was all

blue skies, magic money trees, buy a unicorn. It inspired people to

believe in some sort of future and the other tragedy of this campaign

was we failed then pitfully to take on what he was putting forward, have

the argument and put the economy at the heart of the campaign. And we

know every campaign is won on the economy.

The longer the campaign went on, the more confident Jeremy Corbyn became.

After one shock forecast of a hung parliament, he turned up to a

leaders' debate, which Theresa May was boycotting. I think the first

rule of leadership is to show up. You don't call a general election...

APPLAUSE You don't then not be bothered to

debaited the issues at stake... Is it ours to win on June 8th. Is

that OK? The Corbyn surge seemed to be based

on a hunger for change, not just at home, change as well to Theresa

May's threat to leave the EU without a deal.

Undetected by his opponents and undetected by his own candidates and

by most pollsters Jeremy Corbyn was assembling a coalition of those

opposed to the Tories, opposed to austerity, opposed to Brexit as

well. Two-Party Politics was coming back and yes, the young were going

to vote. On the last night of his campaign,

Jeremy Corbyn came home to Islington, in North London.

He's going out and reaching out to people and people who I have never,

ever seen care about politics are finally getting involved.

I finally have someone that I can believe. Someone that I know will

deliver. Someone that can unite people. And he will change Britain

for the better. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Sum up in a word what he represents. Peace. Hope. Hope? Yes, hope,

definitely hope. It is fitting Labour chose this, a

chapel for his final election rally. Just look at this - religious

fervour. They believe in the good book. Labour's manifesto. They

believe in the direction that points to a promised land. But above all,

they believe in him. JC.

And this campaign has brought together people in a way that I've

never experienced before in politics. It's brought together

people from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life. And

you know what's brought them together - hope.

Even then few in this vast crowd dared to hope they could do more

than limit their losses to the Tories.

But just 24 hours later all that would change.

And what we're saying is the Conservatives are the largest party.

Note, they don't have an overall majority at this stage. 314 for the

Conservatives. That's down 17. If these numbers are correct, then

Theresa May has played a high-risk political game and she appears she

may have lost her gamble. Nick Robinson is in Islington North,

Jeremy Corbyn's seat. Everybody is going to be cautious

about this exit poll because it comes as such a surprise.

It became clear the exit poll was right. The next Prime Minister...

Jeremy Corbyn walked into his count looking like a winner. Minutes

later, in Maidenhead, Theresa May looked like a woman who knew she'd

just committed political suicide. A Prime Minister with a majority had

thrown it away. And it wasn't just the Tories who

were surprised. Labour's candidate in Halifax had been preparing to

find a new job. Line Holly Lynch... A majority of

less than 500 increased to more than 5,000.

I am a bit overquhelmented. It is a fantastic result in the end.

And in Derby North... Chris Williamson is duly elected Member of

Parliament for the Derby North constituency... I was saying to

people they had literally not just changed the course of this election,

but changed the course of history. What about Labour's Peter Kyle in

Hove, who believed his leader was a liability? Peter Kyle, Kyle, 36,

942. A majority of 1200 had gone up to 18,000. What we have done is

remarkable. We could well have saved our country from a hard Brexit. That

is something that history will thank Jeremy Corbyn for. Brexit was meant

to be the Tory's secret weapon, but listen to the man Theresa May had

just made her new Chief of Staff. We are very clear in my seat, the area

of the constituency where Labour did best, was the area that had voted

heavily for remain. There is clearly evidence that people who are angry

about Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn managed to get them behind him.

Now you might be forgiven for thinking Jeremy Corbyn had just won

the election. It is seismic. It will be recorded

as such in history as a moment when, in a sense, Labour found its heart

and its soul again. I see it as being the first step, one more step

to Government. I don't think we will see Jeremy

Corbyn in Downing Street. I think a lot of people actually supported him

confident that he wouldn't get into Downing Street. Never in my lifetime

did I think that we would see a socialist Parliament in Number Ten.

Never thought it would happen again. Not in my lifetime. It's going to

happen. It is worth remembering he did not win this election. He was

still 56 seats behind us. But fair play to him. He fought a good

campaign. In contrast, Theresa May had a

dreadful campaign. And when she returned to Downing Street she

couldn't bring herself to mention that she'd actually lost her

majority. What the country needs more than

ever is certainty. And having secured the largest number of votes

and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear

that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy

and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority

in the House of Commons. Now, let's get to work.

I was expecting like a lot of Conservatives were, a speech in

which she acknowledged the election had not gone the way she hoped. Good

Conservative colleagues had lost their seats and she would try harder

and work together to provide stable Government. We heard none of that.

So, I am afraid this headline wrote itself. At any other time Theresa

May might have been forced to quit. But no Tory dares risk another

election now. So how long can she survive? I think she's in a lot of

trouble. I think she's a dead woman walking. Lounge she stays on Death

Row, who knows. Brexit will continue to sour the atmosphere and in the

background the Europeans constantly saying, no, these are the terms.

These are the terms. Take it or leave it.

And two years of that, the maximum, I guess, is the background in which

a weak Government without a majority day by day would be buffeted by the

storm of events. Theresa May faces the toughest set

of negotiations any Prime Minister has faced since the war. With her

authority shattered, and with no majority in Parliament.

The cynics say if voting changed anything, they'd abolish it. Well

they couldn't be more wrong. Voting has just changed Britain in ways

almost no-one predicted. And that change has a long, long way to run.

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