PM reveals she was devastated and did not see result coming in first lengthy broadcast interview since losing her majority

Theresa May has said she was “devastated” when she learned of the exit poll on election night that showed she had failed to win a majority and cried when her husband hugged her in condolence.

In her first lengthy broadcast interview since last month’s election, the prime minister told BBC Radio 5 Live she knew the Conservative campaign “wasn’t going perfectly” but was nonetheless shocked at the exit poll.

May said she did not watch the announcement of the exit poll on TV at 10pm on polling day due to “a little bit of superstition”, but instead had her husband, Philip, relay the news.

“I was shocked at the result that had come through in the exit poll,” May told interviewer Emma Barnett.

“It took a few minutes for it to sort of sink in, what that was telling me. My husband gave me a hug, and then I got on the phone to the Conservative party to find out what had happened.

“I felt, I suppose, devastated really. I knew the campaign wasn’t going perfectly, but still the messages I was getting from people I was speaking to, but also the comments we were getting back from a lot of people that were being passed on to me, were that we were going to get a better result than we did.”

Asked if she shed a tear when Philip hugged her, May replied: “Yes, a little tear, at that moment.”

But the prime minister said she felt obliged to collect herself and begin planning for political life in a hung parliament.

She said: “You’re a human being, you’ve been through that experience, but I was there as leader of the party and prime minister and had a responsibility then, as we went through the night, to determine what we were going to do the next morning.”

May said she had not expected the result, but argued that very few people had predicted it.

“As the campaign was going on I realised that everything wasn’t going perfectly, but throughout the whole campaign the expectation still was that the result was going to be a different one, a better one for us, than it was,” she said. “We didn’t see the result that came coming.

“If I’m honest, I’ve heard stories about quite a few Labour MPs who didn’t think they were going to keep their seats and ended up keeping those seats. So when the result came through it was a complete shock.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The exit poll. Photograph: BBC

Asked if she had considered resigning after the election, May said she “felt there was a responsibility there, to ensure that the country still had a government”.

She said: “Going through that night I was seeing really good colleagues who I’d worked with, who were losing their seats. Again, I used the word devastating, because it is pretty devastating – it’s very distressing when you see people that you know have done a good job lose their seats.

“I called the election, I led the campaign and I take responsibility for what happened. But there’s also a responsibility for the future, for the country, and that was about ensuring the country had a government.”

May said she still felt it had been the right thing to do to call the election: “I don’t regret calling it, I think it was the right thing to do at the time. I’d called it because of concerns about how we were going to go forwards, particularly on Brexit.”

Bur she denied being out of touch in not realising the campaign was not going well.

“It wasn’t the case that there was a point in time where it was sort of, suddenly, ‘We’ve got to change direction in this campaign, or do this in the campaign rather than what we were doing previously’,” she said.



“We didn’t see it coming. I don’t think many people in the Labour party saw it coming.”

Asked whether she was a feminist, May said she was, as she believed it was “important women have equal opportunities”.



Barnett followed this up by asking if, as a feminist, May had worries about making an informal coalition deal with the Democratic Unionists given the Northern Irish party’s position on some equalities issues.

May said: “One of the important things with that deal, was that we were very clear that the Conservative party was not going to row back at all in anything we’ve done on the equalities agenda.”