The election landslide that Theresa May had hoped for never arrived last week. Instead, media outlets around the world were flooded with intense scrutiny of how the British Prime Minister’s election gamble had spectacularly backfired.

‘How did it come to this? How could a politician hailed for her courage and tactical acumen a year ago be spending this weekend holed up in Downing Street, friendless and widely ridiculed, a prisoner of her furious party and of events that have spun out of her control?” wondered the Observer. “Whatever the position of Theresa May three days after the election, it is not strong and it is not stable… May finds herself in an impossible position. She must respond to the electorate’s rejection of austerity and hard Brexit. There are moderates in her party who will demand it of her. But those to the right of her will try to prevent her from doing so. This election result calls for a far more open style of governing. Discredited, humiliated, diminished: May has lost credibility and leverage in her party, her country and across Europe. Where there was respect, there is ridicule; where there was strength, there is weakness; where there was self-assurance, there is doubt. She looks too weak to deliver her manifesto, too vulnerable to tackle dissent and too enfeebled to lead Britain. It is impossible to see her having the influence, authority or credibility to serve her country,” the paper said in a scathing indictment of the British leader.

The Globe and Mail in Canada, however, felt that the word “disaster” was being flung around liberally as a one-word summary of the British election.

“And yes, if your name is Theresa May, it’s certainly a catastrophe of the first order… But for everyone else, not least Britain’s friends and allies, the election outcome is a good news story – or at least the best result that could reasonably have been hoped for. The ‘hard Brexit’ that May wanted a mandate from the voters to pursue; involving a sharp and near-total break from the European Union? It’s off the table. The breakup of Britain itself, in a second Scottish independence referendum? Also off the menu, thanks to the enormous electoral losses suffered by the separation-minded Scottish National Party. The renewal of conflict in Northern Ireland, provoked by Brexit? Don’t hold your breath. As of Friday morning, a hard Brexit, or any Brexit at all, is far less likely than it was on Thursday night. And Great Britain’s continued existence is more likely than ever,” the paper said.

The Straits Times meanwhile said Britain’s Conservatives were swiftly acquiring a reputation for spectacularly misreading the public mind. “David Cameron led his nation into a hapless referendum on staying or leaving the European Union, a vote whose stunning and wholly unexpected result left British people looking like turkeys that had got the Christmas they had prayed for. Now, Prime Minister Theresa May has been weakened politically — perhaps fatally even — by the stunning results of the surprise election she called in a bid which seemed then as a sure bet to elevate her mandate and strengthen her negotiating hand with Brussels at the Brexit talks. The June 8 vote must be recognised for what it is: the weakened credibility of the Tories, the rise of left-wing Labour, and a rebuke to austerity politics. The double-digit gain in vote share of Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn, is astounding. It also cannot escape notice that most of the seats yielded by the UK Independence Party went to Labour, despite May’s hard line on Brexit.”

The Hindu in India weighed in on the debacle and said: “No single party securing the necessary majority of 326 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons is not an unprecedented outcome in UK politics: it happened, for instance, in 2010 and in 1974. Yet the spectacle of non-majority party leaders seeking to meet the Queen the morning after in a bid to somehow cobble together a standing coalition government elicited sarcasm. Indeed, it is a winding path laden with avoidable pitfalls that has brought the UK to this crossroads... The silver lining may be that by exercising their democratic rights they have given voice to their collective political opinions; and whoever helms their nation would do well to understand all the nuances of their choice.”