Uncertain times ahead after May’s election majority gamble backfires
IF a week is a long time in politics then two months seems like a millennium. Back in April when Theresa May shocked the Westminster establishment by calling a snap election many, indeed most, commentators hailed it as a genius stroke by the UK’s new Iron Lady. With the Conservatives enjoying an enormous lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour anything other than a Tory landslide seemed unthinkable.
Labour would be wiped out, the Conservatives would be in power for the next 15 years and with a huge parliamentary majority and public mandate, Theresa May would enter the Brexit talks with a strong negotiating hand.
My, oh my. What a difference an election makes.
After a shambolic Tory campaign – that proved May is no Thatcher – and a Corbyn campaign that was as adept as the Conservatives’ was inept, Theresa May finds herself without a majority and severely weakened.
May’s weakness is highlighted by where she has been forced to seek support to prop up her humiliated administration.
Though a final deal is yet to be done, it appears certain that Arlene Foster’s DUP will back the Conservatives in Westminster and keep May – or whoever succeeds her as Tory leader – in power.
Foster and the DUP’s role as Queen makers has taken voters in the UK entirely by surprise and thousands have taken to the Internet to find out who they are and what they stand for.
Several commentators, particularly in the North, have expressed a degree of amusement at the fact that the six counties – largely ignored in both the Brexit and General Election campaigns – have now regained their starring role in Westminster’s game of thrones.
It’s ironic too that the DUP had castigated the UUP for attempting a formal alliance with the Tories in the 2010 British election.
Whether the Northern Irish tail will wag the UK dog remains to be seen but the DUP finds itself, very unexpectedly, in an enormously powerful position.
This is likely to have positives and negatives for the Republic and the nationalist community in the north.
Understandably, northern nationalists are extremely concerned that, with their new influence, the DUP will seek to scrap many of the concessions nationalists won in the Good Friday agreement.
The impact on negotiations to restore the devolved government in Stormont will also be considerable.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP will find it difficult to agree to power sharing negotiations, led by Secretary of State James Brokenshire, whose party is reliant on the DUP to stay in power. If a neutral facilitator or ‘honest broker’ can’t be found then the prospect of a return to direct rule looks increasingly likely.
That Northern Ireland would be without its own government during the Brexit process could be potentially disastrous for everyone. The few saving graces are that Foster and the DUP want to avoid a hard border with the Republic and that their influence should keep the North and the border at the top of the agenda during the UK and EU’s divorce talks.