They held a national election in the heartland of parliamentary democracy yesterday.

A lot of people turned up.

Some of them weren’t allowed to vote because polling stations were understaffed.

One party, the Conservatives, appears to have won a lot more seats than either of the other two major parties.

Another party, Labour, appears to have overwhelmingly lost its parliamentary majority in a powerful message of rejection from the electorate.

Under the British constitution the losers are entitled to form a government if they can scratch together enough support from other parties. Which means, under the constitution, the winners become the losers.

The Brits call it a parliamentary democracy.

We’d call it a parliamentary debacle.