"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 and it will be recorded as such." "Labour found its heart and its 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 of what really happened." "It's 7.30am, Monday morning." "People were standing there with freshly blow-dried hair and best Chanel suits on ready to roll, and 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 Cabinet, where we agreed that 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 looked 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?" "Look, 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..." " Your colleagues said," ""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." "But 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." "I'm Peter Kyle, your MP." "Do you think you'll be voting for me?" "I'd probably vote for you, but not necessarily for the other guy that's in charge." " You mean Jeremy?" " Jeremy Corbyn." " Yeah." "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 1,200 votes." "He was the only Labour MP in the South-East outside London." "There's no doubt that Jeremy has been a drag 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 voters 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."" "So I do think 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 who'd been outvoted in the EU referendum, were determined their voice would be heard this time." "This election is about you." "All the old ones were saying, oh, yeah, big crowds, but you're talking to the converted." "And 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." "So I thought, we've got a phenomenon here that people have never seen before and 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 that was all about her." "It's about having a strong and stable Government." "A 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!" " 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, I mean, 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, making 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, the genuine love for Jeremy Corbyn, is palpable." "It was, though, 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." "Tories out!" "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, which is part of north Halifax." "Labour's Holly Lynch began this campaign worried she might lose." "This is good." "Some 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." "And I'm 77 this year." "I'm going to vote Conservative because I just don't think" "Corbyn will do right, in Europe, with the exit." " Right, OK." " I just don't think he's strong enough." " No." "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 and 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 ownership scare me quite a bit because 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 cold 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, and 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 paying an awful lot, other people weren't paying at all." "But 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 of 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." "And it also, of course, undermined the central slogan - strong and stable - and you notice that 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." "And is it your mum, did you say, that you're caring for?" "My mother-in-law, yeah." "She has dementia." "She lives in her own home." "We don't know if she'll have to go into a home, but do I have to sell her house?" "Cos they were saying in one thing, when you've got £100,000, you don't have to sell your house." "Then, the day after, they went, "Oh, we'll put a cap on it."" "But they're not telling us what the cap is." "Theresa May had 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 politicians can't vote against something the public have voted for in a manifesto." "And that's the way to make things happen." "Then came an event which would stop the campaign in its tracks." "'Greater Manchester Police have said they believe one man carried out 'last night's bombing at a pop concert in the city, 'killing 22 people, 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 first went into Parliament in 1983." "This US-style attack ad was watched by six million people." "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 that he was asked pretty 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." "And I think it was almost counterproductive for them." "And 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 the 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 that 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 particularly 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, but you're now asking that to go on potentially for 10 or 11 years and that's too much." "That is something that 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'll give you the figure in a moment." " You don't know it?" " Um..." "You're logging into your iPad here." "You've announced a major policy and you don't know how much it will cost?" "Can I give you the exact figure in a moment?" "Is this not the issue with people and the Labour Party..." "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, everything was going to be marvellous." "But it inspired people to believe in some sort of future and the other tragedy of this campaign was that we failed then, pitifully, 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" "..and say it's the most important election in her lifetime and then not even be bothered to come and debate the issues at stake." "It's ours to win on June 8th." "Is that OK?" "CHEERING" "The Corbyn surge seemed to be based on a hunger for change, not just change at home, change as well to Theresa May's threat to leave the EU without a deal." "Undetected by his opponents, undetected by his own candidates, undetected 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." "And 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 entirely fitting that Labour chose this, a chapel, for its 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 extremely cautious about this exit poll because it comes as such a surprise." "But it soon became clear that the exit poll was right." "Are you 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." "Holly Walker-Lynch is duly elected the member for the Halifax constituency." "A majority of less than 500 had increased to more than 5,000." "A bit overwhelmed." "It's a fantastic result in the end." "And in Derby North..." "Chris Williamson is this day duly elected Member of Parliament for the Derby North constituency..." "I was constantly saying to young 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, Labour Party, 36,942." "A majority of just 1,200 had gone up to 18,000." "What we've done is remarkable and 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 has 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." "So, there's clearly evidence, I think, that people who are angry about Brexit still," "Jeremy Corbyn somehow managed to get them behind him." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "Now, you might be forgiven for thinking" "Jeremy Corbyn had just won the election." "It is seismic." "And it will be recorded as such in history as a moment when, in a sense," "Labour found its heart and its soul again." "And 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 actually he wouldn't get into Downing Street." "Never in my lifetime did I think we'd see what is, well, a socialist Prime Minister in Number 10." "Never thought it would happen again." "Not in my lifetime." "It's going to happen." "It is worth remembering he didn't 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, I think, a lot of Conservatives were, a speech in which she acknowledged the election had not gone the way she'd 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." "And so, I'm 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." "How long 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, will be buffeted by the storm of events." "Theresa May now faces the toughest set of negotiations any Prime Minister has faced since the war - with her authority shattered, and with no majority in Parliament." "You know what 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."