Theresa May is fighting to stay on as British prime minister after yesterday’s disastrous election result forced both of her closest advisers to quit and unease mounts in her own party about her courtship of a small Northern Irish party whose votes she needs to govern.

Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill both resigned after becoming the target of Conservative Party fury in the aftermath of an election that wiped out its parliamentary majority. Earlier, the BBC reported that May could face a leadership challenge unless she sacked the aides, who wielded enormous influence over her.

May’s weakness are in full display after her gamble on the snap election backfired spectacularly. She has kept her five senior ministers in their positions, though few of them have publicly backed her since election night. Anger in her ranks is palpable, with some prominent member uncomfortable with the plan to form a parliamentary alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, which opposes gay marriage and abortion.

Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who is a lesbian, expressed those doubts publicly on Friday evening after speaking to May.

“I was fairly straightforward with her and I told her that there were a number of things that count to me more than the party,” Davidson told the BBC. May’s chief whip Gavin Williamson is in Belfast today holding talks with the DUP, her office said.

Earlier, May’s former head of communications launched a series of brutal attacks on the prime minister’s decision to place so much trust in her two chiefs of staff and her inability to connect with voters or the rest of the party.

"If you have those weaknesses within you, you hire people that can do these things for you,” Katie Perrior said in an interview with BBC radio. “I’m afraid she didn’t have those qualities herself but she hired people that didn’t have them either."

Final Insult

She criticized Hill and Timothy for being arrogant, and in a separate piece for the Times newspaper she described some of Hill’s ideas as “batshit crazy.”

“May doesn’t need street fighters now, she needs people with charm and diplomacy to get her through the next few weeks and months,” she said.

In a final insult to May, the west London district of Kensington, which has the highest mean income in the country and has been a Conservative bastion for decades, went to the Labour Party by a margin of just 20 votes late on Friday.

That leaves the Conservatives with 317 seats in Parliament out of 650, meaning they’re likely to need the DUP’s 10 votes to win a confidence motion.

Neither the Tories or DUP is seeking a formal coalition, of the sort Britain saw in 2010 under David Cameron. Instead, May’s asking for some version of a “confidence and supply” agreement, where the DUP agrees to support the government on finance and a few other key votes.

In return, the DUP is likely to ask for more money to be spent on Northern Ireland, and other specific concessions.

In the meantime, European Union leaders are showing May little sympathy with Brexit negotiations due to start in nine days. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she saw no reason to grant the U.K. a grace period. On the day results kept in, some EU officials even appeared to be gloating.

“Yet another own goal, after Cameron now May, will make already complex negotiations even more complicated,” EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Guy Verhofstadt tweeted out.