Others called the election a "disaster" and an "own goal" that would "make already complex negotiations even more difficult", and risked increasing the chances of the talks breaking down altogether. Senior EU sources also said that if London insisted on talking about a free trade deal before the issues of the divorce bill, citizens' rights and the border in Ireland, the EU would take a year to draft a new mandate for its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in effect killing the negotiations. Meanwhile, back in Westminster As of this week, the political action is finally back in Westminster following the election campaign, as MPs return to the Commons – and in notably different political proportions to those that more or less everyone expected. The 30 extra Labour MPs and 13 fewer Tories might be only a relatively small proportion of the entire 650-seat Commons, but it has dramatically transformed the political landscape. Theresa May, who called the snap election in the expectation of winning a crushing majority, is instead hanging on to her job by her fingernails, and must placate furious – and no longer afraid – Conservative MPs with a more conciliatory style, and perhaps a tweaked platform of policies. Already her two main advisers have departed, and a planned shake-up of May's cabinet instead became a tweak, not least as she no longer has the authority to remove any fellow big beasts. The vital pact with the DUP that will allow her to stay at No 10 has, moreover, yet to be sealed. For Labour, the problems are more benign, and to look at Jeremy Corbyn's face you might never guess it was his party that, officially, lost the election. He has postponed a shakeup of his front bench, mainly to keep the media focus on the Conservatives' many problems. Now suddenly seen as electable, the Labour leader has seen a few of Labour's previously critical heavyweights allow talk to happen about how they might consider a return to the shadow cabinet. A few might be given roles, but Corbyn is also believed to want to remain loyal to the MPs who stuck with him. Yes, it's a conundrum. But as a problem, it is one that May would love to have. You should also know ... Read these: In The Guardian, Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform thinktank is optimistic about a softer Brexit, arguing that May's crumbling authority offers a new chance for compromise: The EU will make it clear that if you want more economic integration, you must give up sovereignty. In recent months they have grown increasingly frustrated with May, her team and the key Whitehall ministries, accusing them of being ill-prepared, lacking expertise and making too many unrealistic demands ... The 27 hope for a softer and more realistic British approach – whether they have to talk to May Mk II or a new prime minister. If the British oblige, the EU could scale back some of its demands, for example on money. And then a deal would become more likely. On Project Syndicate, Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik school of government at Oxford University, offers negotiating tips for a weakened UK government, saying that thus far it has been too combative and too self-interested, and has created altogether unrealistic expectations: May called the recent election because she wanted a stronger mandate to negotiate a good deal for her country. She didn't get it. Now more than ever, securing a deal will require shifting to a collaborative, outward-looking, and realistic negotiating strategy. And in a brilliant essay in the New York Review of Books, Fintan O'Toole argues that this tumultuous election showed above all that the Brexit chickens were finally coming home to roost: Brexit is a back-of-the-envelope proposition. Strip away the post-imperial make-believe and the Little England nostalgia, and there's almost nothing there, no clear sense of how a middling European country with little native industry can hope to thrive by cutting itself off from its biggest trading partner and most important political alliance … The Brits want what they can't possibly have. They want everything to change and everything to go as before. They want an end to immigration – except for all the immigrants they need to run their economy and health service. They want it to be 1900, when Britain was a superpower and didn't have to make messy compromises with foreigners. To take power, May had to pretend that she, too, dreams these impossible dreams. And that led her to embrace a phoney populism in which the narrow and ambiguous majority who voted for Brexit under false pretences are be re-imagined as "the people" … May's appeal to "the people" as a mystic entity came up against Corbyn's appeal to real people in their daily lives, longing not for a date with national destiny, but for a good school, a functioning National Health Service, and decent public transport. Phoney populism came up against a more genuine brand of anti-establishment radicalism that convinced the young and the marginalised that they had something to come out and vote for. Tweet of the week Ian Dunt on fighting form (thread): | 
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Theresa May is significantly weaker after the unexpected election result and is now reliant for her majority on Northern Ireland's DUP. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters 
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