Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.K. leader reaches deal with N. Ireland party
LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May struck a deal in principle Saturday with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to prop up the Conservative government, stripped of its majority in a disastrous election.
The result has demolished May’s political authority, and in an attempt to pacify her party, she let go her top two aides, who had earned reputations for secrecy and arrogance.
The moves buy May a temporary reprieve. But the ballot-box humiliation has wounded her leadership just as Britain is about to begin complex exit talks with the European Union.
May’s office said Saturday that the Democratic Unionist Party, which has 10 seats in Parliament, had agreed to a “confidence and supply” arrangement with the government. That means the Democratic Unionist Party will back the government on key votes, but it’s not a coalition government or a broader pact.
May’s office added that the Cabinet will discuss the agreement Monday.
The arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party will make governing easier, but some Conservatives were apprehensive about the deal Saturday. The party is a socially conservative pro-British Protestant group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and once appointed an environment minister who believes human-driven climate change is a myth.
The announcement of the deal came after May’s chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned Saturday. They formed part of May’s inner circle and were blamed by many Conservatives for the party’s lackluster campaign and unpopular election platform, which alienated older voters with its plan to take away a winter fuel allowance and make them pay more for long-term care.
Reports had also been circulating that senior Conservative ministers in May’s Cabinet had warned her that they would challenge her leadership of the party unless she became more inclusive, consulted more widely and fired Hill and Timothy.
Hill is known for her aggressive treatment of senior ministers and other May staff, while Timothy is considered responsible for shaping the Conservative election platform, which proved so unpopular with voters that one Conservative member of Parliament, Nigel Evans, said, “We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot; we shot ourselves in the head.”
May’s former director of communications, Katie Perrior, spoke openly Saturday about the behavior of the two aides, which she described as tyrannical, and resulted in an office that was “pretty dysfunctional.”
In a resignation statement on the Conservative Home website, Timothy conceded that the campaign had failed to communicate “Theresa’s positive plan for the future” and missed signs of surging support for the main opposition Labor Party.
Some senior Tories had made the removal of Hill and Timothy a condition for continuing to support May, who has vowed to remain prime minister. May’s party won 318 seats, 12 fewer than it had before May called a snap election, and eight short of the 326 needed for an outright majority. The Labor Party surpassed expectations by winning 262 seats.
May announced later that Gavin Barwell — a former housing minister who lost his seat in Thursday’s election — would be her new chief of staff.
May said Barwell would help her “reflect on the election and why it did not deliver the result I hoped for.”
Evans said the departure of the two aides was “a start” but that there needed to be changes to the way the government functioned in the wake of the campaign.
He said the Conservative election manifesto — which Hill and Timothy were key in drafting — was “a full assault on the core Tory voters, who are senior citizens.”
“It was a disaster,” he said. “Our manifesto was full of fear and the Labor Party’s manifesto was full of promises.”
May called the early election when her party was comfortably ahead in the polls, in the hope of increasing her majority and strengthening the United Kingdom’s hand in exit talks with the EU.
Instead, the result has sown confusion and division in British ranks, just days before negotiations are due to start on June 19.
May wanted to win explicit backing for her stance on the divorce, which involves leaving the EU’s single market and imposing restrictions on immigration while trying to negotiate a free trade deal with the bloc. Some say her failure means the government must now take a more flexible approach to the divorce.
The Times of London said in an editorial that “the election appears to have been, among other things, a rejection of the vague but harshly worded prospectus for Brexit for which Mrs. May sought a mandate.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, said Friday that she’s ready to defend the interests of European Union members in exit negotiations and doesn’t see any reason for the process to be delayed by the results of the U.K.’s election.
“We will try to defend the interests of our 27 members states, and Great Britain will defend its own interests,” Merkel said in Mexico City after meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. “At this moment I don’t see any obstacle for us carrying out the negotiations as they have been planned,” she later added.
The resignations of May’s chiefs of staff came as May worked to fill jobs in her minority government and replace ministers who lost their seats Thursday. Her weakened position in the party rules out big changes, and May’s office has said that the most senior Cabinet members — including Treasury chief Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd — will keep their jobs, but she is expected to shuffle the lower ranks of ministers.