This Parliament may not go the full distance

THIS hung Parliament is less than a third of the way through its maximum theoretical life of five years. Will it last that long? Until now the assumption has been that it will. Precarious as the Conservative position has been since the election, when Theresa May lost them their majority, two things seemed certain. First, no Conservative MP wanted to have another election. That’s because they think they might lose to Labour if the country went to the polls again. Second, the “supply and confidence” arrangement struck last year with Northern Ireland’s 10 DUP MPs meant at least the Tory Government could be sure of getting its budgets through (“supply”) and preventing defeat in any votes of no confidence.

Those calculations changed last night. The DUP decided to break the arrangement struck only 17 months ago and refused to support key budget motions in the House of Commons. On one occasion they voted with the Labour Opposition, who would have won the motion they tabled on child poverty if Jeremy Corbyn and at least 27 other Labour MPs had bothered to turn up. In other words, the DUP withheld “supply”.

Does it require such a leap of the imagination to think they may also withdraw “confidence”? The separation of Northern Ireland from the mainland, and its closer integration with the republic, may be an inevitable consequence of the Brexit that the DUP campaigned for — but these are not people with a track record of taking responsibility for their actions.

This morning the idea that the DUP might bring down the Government that oversaw the weakening, in their eyes, of the Union no longer seems as implausible as it once did. Factor in the occasional by-election, and add the Tory MPs who can’t stomach their party’s approach to Brexit, and the long-term future of the Government looks even more in the balance.

The average length of a Parliament in Britain since the Second World War has been significantly less than the maximum five years. As the governing majority evaporates just a year and a half into the current one, why should we assume this unhappy Parliament will go the full distance?