Election ‘could hit’ Brexit deal
AMINORITY Tory government will be pressured into ‘watering down’ a Brexit deal, it’s been claimed.
Theresa May’s Conservatives lost their majority in the June 8 general election but the party is in negotiations with Arlene Foster’s Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to gain backing for a minority government.
Conservative Rossendale county councillor David Foxcroft said: “My concern is that certain factions from both parties will try and use that minority government to water down the overall process and not actually deliver with what we want to get for our country with Brexit.
“If it gets the right deal and the right support for the government working with the DUP does make sense but on a personal level I feel incredibly uncomfortable with the DUP because some of the things that they believe are not things that sit comfortably with myself, as a gay man, to listen to their views on homosexuality and abortion.
“We have got to be clear, it’s not a coalition - we are not going to be holding hands, we are just agreeing terms of support.”
He added: “I think we have still got the right leader in Theresa May and that she is the right person in Number 10 to keep us stable over the next few years because it will be bringing changes for us across the country.”
Rossendale’s council leader and Labour parlia- mentary candidate Alyson Barnes said the Tories’ decision to form a minority government with the DUP was a “desperate measure”.
She said: “The irony of which - given the Tories’ comments on Jeremy Corbyn - during the election campaign is not lost on people. This arrangement could easily put undue pressure on the Northern Irish peace process too.
“The Brexit negotiations are the most important thing facing our country at the moment, these should be dealt with by a cross party group.”
Haslingden MP Graham Jones believes Parliament will go “very quiet” on domestic legislation due to the weakness of the Conservative party.
He added: “They don’t really have a majority to get through controversial legislation. I believe the government’s austerity programme will have to end and the only thing it will be able to do to balance the books is to raise taxes on those with broadest shoulders like the wealthy and big business.”
He added that the Conservatives’ failure to achieve a majority was, in effect, a rejection of a ‘Hard Brexit’ strategy.
‘These should be dealt with by a cross party group’