COALITION OF CRACKPOTS
May forms alliance with Northern Ireland hard right Unionists oppose same sex marriage and abortion Furious Tory MPs believe PM won’t survive disaster
THERESA May has linked up with the hard right, anti-gay DUP in a desperate bid to stay at No10.
She will need the Northern Irish party with 10 MPs to pass laws.
But Tory MP Anna Soubry said: “She now has to consider her position.”
THERESA May was clinging to her job last night insisting she can stay on as Prime Minister, despite her crushing election setback.
She announced she was forming a new Government propped up by the hard-right Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland after losing her majority in Parliament.
The DUP opposes abortion, hates gay marriage and its former leader Peter Robinson was once pictured wearing the red beret of loyalist terror group Ulster Resistance. He was also an ally of former Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley.
Mrs May’s unholy alliance angered liberal Tories, furious at her cutting a deal with such a hard-right group.
Ruth Davidson, the gay Scottish Tory leader, who won 13 seats to keep Theresa May in power, aimed a tweet at the DUP by tweeting a link to a pro-gay marriage speech she made.
She said: “As a Protestant Unionist about to marry an Irish Catholic, here’s my Amnesty Pride lecture.”
The Tories now have 19 gay MPs – almost double the number of DUP politicians in their new alliance.
Yet in an extraordinary statement on the steps of Downing Street, Mrs May insisted she can somehow govern the country for the next five years without a majority – and did not even mention the thumping setback suffered only hours earlier.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said she now has no mandate for her cruel Tory austerity plans and urged her to resign immediately.
“I think it’s pretty clear who won this election,” he said. “The Prime Minister has no authority. The Conservative Party have no mandate.”
The stunning election result left the Tories on just 318 seats – down 12 from before the election, and eight short of a Parliamentary majority.
Labour were on 262 seats – up 29 on the night and three more than they won under Gordon Brown in 2010.
A final, agonising knife-edge vote in the rich London constituency of Kensington amazingly went to Labour last night, by 20 votes, after recounts.
Either way, Mr Corbyn had secured the biggest increase in vote share by any major party since the Second World War – up almost 10% on the 30.4% secured by Ed Miliband in 2015.
The shock result was largely driven by a huge surge of younger voters turning out for Mr Corbyn, plus former UKIP voters backing Labour in much higher numbers than expected. It was a disastrous outcome
for Mrs May, who had only triggered the snap general election because she said she needed a big majority and a fresh mandate to deliver a hard Brexit plan.
Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said: “Her position is completely untenable,”
But with the Tories the largest party in the hung Parliament – and Mrs May still the serving Prime Minister – the Tory leader was given first opportunity to find support from other parties to keep herself in Downing Street.
And she found it with the backing of the fundamentalist DUP, one of the most right-wing mainstream parties in Western Europe.
The paramilitary group Ulster Resistance was founded by a collection of people who went on to be prominent DUP politicians. And the party agreed to prop up her minority Tory Government with their 10 MPs following a shady deal early yesterday. The DUP’s views on gay marriage and abortion so repelled former Tory PM David Cameron he always refused to cut deals with them.
Mrs May was accused of shocking hypocrisy after spending much of the election campaign accusing Labour of plotting a “Coalition of Chaos” with parties like the Lib Dems and the SNP.
And Tony Blair’s former adviser Jonathan Powell – who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland – warned it was “dangerous” for the fragile peace process to see the Government backing one side over the other.
But shameless Mrs May ignored all the warnings and agreed an informal confidence-and-supply deal with the
DUP, before heading to Buckingham Palace and announcing she was forming a new Government.
“What the country needs more than ever is certainty,” Mrs May said on her return to Downing Street.
“Only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons. As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist Party in particular.”
But Tory MPs and defeated candidates were seething at her arrogant statement, which failed to even acknowledge the defeat she had just suffered.
Many were calling for the heads of her adviser Nick Timothy, blamed for her botched manifesto.
In a sign of her weakened position Mrs May was forced to make a further statement later when she apologised to the Tory candidates who lost seats.
“I will reflect on what we need to do in the future to take the party forward,” she said.
DUP leader Arlene Foster gave no details of the price she has demanded to prop up Mrs May, saying only: “The Prime Minister has spoken with me this morning and we will enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to bring stability to our nation.”
Even with the DUP’s support, Mrs May will still have the tiniest of majorities when the House of Commons returns later this month – raising
serious questions about whether she can get any key policies through, especially crucial Brexit negotiations, due to begin next week.
Bookies slashed the odds on Mrs May being ousted within weeks by her Tory chums – with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson installed as favourite to take over.
“She is a Dead May Walking,” one Tory source sneered.
Experts said another general election could now be on the cards later this year, as Labour also does not have the
The Prime Minister has no authority, Conservatives have no mandate JEREMY CORBYN ON MRS MAY’S BID TO CLING TO POWER