Conservatives, DUP sign deal to form government

International Desk: Britain’s Conservatives signed a deal on Monday with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that will allow Prime Minister Theresa May to govern after losing her majority in a general election this month.

With the deal, which is reported to provide Northern Ireland with additional funding of up to $2 billion over five years, Mrs. May will be able to win a clear majority vote in Parliament on Wednesday on the legislative program her government set out last week. Without the support of the D.U.P., Mrs. May risked losing that vote of confidence, which would have opened the way for the opposition Labour Party to try to form a minority government of its own.

The reaction from Labour Party officials was caustic. “The price of Theresa May’s political weakness is now becoming clear,” said John McDonnell, the party’s top finance official. “The same Conservative Party which spent the recent election campaign saying there was no money available for the crisis in the National Health Service and schools has now found at least 1 billion pounds to buy a parliamentary majority, with some reports suggesting it could be as much as 2 billion” or around $2.55 billion.

The Northern Irish party, socially conservative and largely Protestant, has 10 lawmakers in Parliament. After nearly two weeks of negotiation, mostly about money for the province, its leader, Arlene Foster, agreed to a “confidence and supply” agreement with Mrs. May. The documents were signed in Downing Street by lesser figures.

Mrs. May was quoted by the Press Association as saying that the pact was a “very, very good one” and that the two parties “share many values,” including “the desire to ensure a strong government, able to put through its program and provide for issues like the Brexit negotiations.” Mrs. Foster said that she was “delighted that we have reached this agreement, which I think works, obviously, for national stability.”

The smaller party will support the Conservatives in votes that could bring down the government. Its support is not guaranteed on other legislation. But the two parties agree on most things, including Britain’s exit from the European Union, and the Democratic Unionists are particularly eager to keep Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party from being prime minister, given his past sympathies with the Irish Catholic Sinn Fein party and the Irish Republican Army.

The terms of the agreement are still vague, beyond the extra funding for the province over the five-year term of the Parliament — if it lasts that long.

Such deals with smaller parties, which are short of a formal coalition, have proved fragile in the past. And Mrs. May’s own position is extremely weak, both within her party, which was shocked by her failure in the election, and in the country.

There is continuing speculation that the Conservatives may choose to replace her as prime minister as early as October; no senior Conservative has publicly suggested that the party wants to fight another election with her as leader.

Some Conservatives, like former Prime Minister John Major, had urged Mrs. May to manage a minority government without the D.U.P., fearing that a formal deal would violate the British government’s vow of neutrality in Northern Ireland, where the D.U.P. and Sinn Fein are at odds over continuing a power-sharing agreement.

Agencies

risingbd/DHAKA/June 26, 2017/Amirul