Agreed, I'm not sure a minority Conservative government propped up by the DUP is at all sustainable. It's pretty much the polar opposite of 'Strong & Stable'.

Not that the other side would be much better tbh - you'd need pretty much all the opposition MPs to form a coalition to get to the required number of seats. And even though they're all 'progressive' in some form, you suspect the cracks would start to show sooner rather than later. It's actually about the worst possible position - we're left in the situation where there not only is there no effective government, there is no way get an effective government without having another election.

Plus she's utterly cocked up the Brexit negotiations before they even start. Her bargaining hand is now effectively empty. Oh and the pound's in the toilet again too.

Well done Theresa, well done <slow handclap>

I am slightly cheered by a few things - firstly Lord Buckethead (google it) and secondly, and this may seem weird coming from me, the performance of the Conservatives in Scotland. Ruth Davidson is a much, much better politician than May could ever be, and also manages to appear to be a vaguely likeable person. I may not agree with her beliefs, but I get the impression she's an actual 'one nation conservative', rather than a rapacious neocon like May & co. Plus I don't like the idea of any political party having a monopoly on representation like the SNP more or less had in Scotland - every government needs an opposition, regardless of which side you sit on.

Thirdly, the fact UKIP are now pretty much irrelevant in UK politics (still didn't stop the BBC having Farage on this morning mind).

All we need is the DUP to get a hissy fit, or a sudden vote of no confidence.

Also, Paul Nuttal has resigned as UKIP leader. They have 0 seats, yet I see their faces on the telly. He was talking about “rebranding” today as well. He knows the score, but can”t say it. UKIP are dead; a poisonous collection of angry people, and they don’t know what to do now.

a few good things have come out of this election ...

the SNP have been put back in their box, very difficult to fight a battle on two fronts.
there is now a viable opposition instead of just Govt. which makes for a pleasant change.
a Conservative Govt. cant get away with everything as they thought they would.
possibly a new leader such as Ruth Davidson who would command greater respect.
younger people registering and getting out there and voting.

and last but certainly not least Brexit is still on track ...

Whilst not legally impossible, the fact that Ruth Davidson isn't an MP is going to make the chances of her becoming leader rather slim. Especially if it means she has to work with the DUP, a group that views her as an "abomination".

I'd also expect some level of change of position from TM on how hard a level of Brexit she's going to aim for now, given that her entire rhetoric for this election was to give her a clear mandate for hard Brexit and that really hasn't happened. At minimum I'd expect remaining in the single market, with whatever concessions that requires, to be quite likely. Having said that, May is also surprisingly arrogant and stupid, so she may still try and plow on regardless. We shall just have to wait and see.

Yeah, the DUP will be pushing for the soft EU exit that it's always wanted.

Mark

The Conservative party has always been ruthless, but it has also always been pragmatic. They may not want Theresa May (in all likelihood they probably never did) but they also know that chucking her over the side now isn't going to go down well - not because she has a lot of personal support but because it looks like heaping more uncertainty on a country that they've pretty much destabilised entirely for their own ends as it is.

So I suspect May won't be pushed especially hard, at least for a while. But I do wonder whether she'll jump. She's played her hand and lost, she's got very little left to gain by being in the job. She doesn't need the money, she certainly doesn't need the hassle and she apparently doesn't enjoy it all that much. It may end up in the bizarre position that a party that really doesn't like her that much has to try to convince her to stay, simply because the alternative would make them look even worse.

Ruth Davidson (as things stand) cannot be Prime Minister since she does not sit in the house. She could in theory become leader of the UK Conservative party and nominate a 'leader of the house', but that whole situation is farcical tbh. If the party want Davidson in charge, they could parachute her into a safe seat bi-election (or the forthcoming GE, assuming it happens in say a year or so) and go from there. Although there's not really much indication she wants the job either to be honest. Conservatives in the Scottish parliament are on the up, which is a lot more than can be said for the Westminster variety. She has a lot to gain by staying up there for this cycle at least and, given the current quality of senior Westminster Conservatives (Johnson? Gove? Rudd? Come off it), it's not as if there's anyone else likely to get the job and make it theirs for the next decade or anything.

And, let's be blunt here, there's a sizeable chunk of the tory party who would let the world burn before they'd put a Gay Scot in charge.

Can anyone tell me more about the claims that an alliance with DUP is against the good Friday agreement?

Nothing specific, but SF/IRA* are hardly likely to play ball when one side can go screaming to mummy.

* I will always call them that, I see attempts at whitewashing their history every day and it's sickening. They called it the 'movement' themselves and it murdered thousands of innocents amongst other crimes.

Specifically it's a formal alliance.
There's rumblings that it may be against the power sharing role set out in the Good Friday Agreement.
If the DUP works with the Conservatives on a case-by-case basis, this may circumvent that.

Mark

And so it begins ... DUP agrees 'confidence' deal with Tories.

Mark

General election 2017: Theresa May is a dead woman walking, says Osborne - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40237819

George isn't bitter at all.

Hope he's right though. A clueless, 'bloody difficult woman' attempting negotiations at an all-boys club on the future of our country? She, ironically, has no clothes, and that's from the woman who said Jezza could be standing there naked and alone.

Queen’s Speech delayed: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 85686.html

Bexit talks delayed by a year: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 85346.html

DUP may have issues with Ruth Davidson. And vice versa. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/815934 ... ction-2017

So all a bloody mess from what I can see. If you had plans, probably best to put them on hold. May are talking about the possibility of another general election in a year.

the Queens speech will be delayed until an agreement is hammered out. nothing unusual it has happened before.

Brexit can be delayed as long as they like there is only a 2 year window and the closer we get to that window the greater the chance we will leave without any agreement which suits me just fine. also Brexit is still the only game in town as they will not be able to push through any of their own extreme policies.

i believe an issue is being made of it, DUP and Ruth Davidson, by the press i believe it will fade away.

another election sooner then later is on the cards but the policies will change and the leave camp will not be as laid back at the next election as they thought it was in the bag this election.

but we will wait and see as these are interesting times ...

I'd agree with you on this up to about a week ago,but I've read some things and there are rumours of other possibilities. The Article 50 declaration can be revoked, with the unanimous agreement of the other member states. Rumours are the EU negotiators have been dropping some hints that such a thing is actually a viable option (you'd think 'not a cat in hell's chance' but apparently so), should negotiations wander on towards the deadline. Rumours also say the 'pro EU' wing of the Tory party - Ken Clark etc - are rumbling about pushing for it, on the basis that 'no deal' would cause significant and long term damage to the state and the economy and therefore falling out is very much not in the country's interests, and they'd have to carry the can for it and be out of government for a generation. So they may be saying 'we are definitely still leaving' right now, but apparently there are plans for a big lump of brinksmanship on both sides.

The point is, right now, we simply don't know what's going to happen. There are no precedents.

And yes, you might say, that's ignoring the will of people. But right now quite a lot of the tory party don't give much a toss for the will of the people. The will of the people as expressed last week gave them an awful lot of grief. Given the election result quite a few Tory MPs think they're on shaky ground, and they also don't think Ruth Davidson will be able to repeat her feats in Scotland now the SNP have put publicly IndyRef2 on the back burner after getting a kicking over it. So given most opinion is we'll have another election well before the five years is up, and there's a good chance when that happens they'll end up in opposition, they feel no great love for the population at large.

Politically, the election may not have changed the government, but it is thought to have changed the battlefield. Brexit wasn't factor in the election at all, and the Tories aren't likely to care near as much about it if it's something they can't use to stay in power.

None of this is determined, but all of this is possible.


That we do. I don't think I can predict where we'll be in 18 months with any certainty at all.

I liken May’s ascension to leader of the Tory party to that oft-used scene in a comedy (usually of a military basis) where a volunteer is called for, and everyone apart from one (who may not be paying much attention,m or is just a bit slower) steps one pace backwards.

The Tory parry leadership contest was a staring competition - and May blinked. No one actually voted for her, there was no final round in their leadership selection process. Everyone else just stood down from it. I expect they know that it was a mess in the making. Whoever won would preside over a truly damaging period for the Conservative Party, and would be responsible for a period of real instability for the country. The thinking was probably that they’d get a serous kicking at the General Election following Brexit (which would be 2020), and the Tories would be much reduced in status and power for a good decade or so. Who’d want that?

So May got the gig. She probably tossed her hat in the ring because the likelihood of Gove or Johnson winning was pretty high, and she knew she wouldn’t have a bat in hell’s chance of winning with those in the running.

This year’s election was not about consolidating power or a mandate, it was about shifting the next election a few years on after Brexit. She gambled, and lost.

The DUP is a problem, and I’m hoping that Sinn Fein see an opportunity and take their seats at Westminster. If they do, then the balance of power shifts away as they could cancel out any DUP votes. No one in their right mind in the Labour party would ask them publicly to do so, but I wonder if channels are open in private.