U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said she will lead a minority government backed by a small Northern Irish party after Thursday’s stunning election defeat that cost her Conservative Party its majority.
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May called the election called in a bid to strengthen her mandate ahead of European Union exit talks.
Instead, voters stripped the Conservatives of their parliamentary majority.
Earlier on Saturday May lost her two closest aides.
British media reported on Sunday (local time) moves were afoot within Ms May’s Conservative Party to dislodge her, while opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who exceeded expectations in Thursday’s vote, insisted she could be ousted and he could replace her. But Johnson said he backed May.
Ms May called the snap election with a view to increasing the narrow majority she had inherited from her predecessor David Cameron but her plan went disastrously wrong.
One government source told The Independent that their demands were likely to be for more money, with infrastructure and services likely to be at the top of the party’s wish-list. That means the Democratic Unionist Party will back the government on key votes, but it’s not a coalition government or a broader pact. But former party leader Iain Duncan Smith said a leadership contest now would be a “catastrophe”.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the British Isles where same-sex marriage remains outlawed.
Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill said the DUP had “betrayed the interests of the people” there and the new arrangement would “end in tears”.
The turmoil engulfing May has increased the chance that Britain will fall out of the European Union in 2019 without a deal.
Ms Cooper said: “We had that strong result as a result not just of what Jeremy and his team were doing nationally, but also thanks to local candidates”.
May wanted to win explicit backing for her stance on Brexit, which involves leaving the EU’s single market and imposing restrictions on immigration while trying to negotiate free trade deal with the bloc. “At this moment I don’t see any obstacle for us carrying out the negotiations as they have been planned”, she later added.
The pound on Friday fell 1.7% against the United States dollar and 1.4 % against the euro.
And the problem is there’s a majority in the House of Commons who don’t really believe in Brexit, who think that Britain should adopt a much softer form of Brexit rather than the harder form of Brexit that Theresa May was advocating.
May also said she would be meeting with her cabinet on Monday and going to France on Tuesday for meetings with French President Macron. The negotiations had been due to start around June 19. The additional 10 votes gets her there.
Britain’s largely pro-Conservative press questioned whether May could remain in power.
In her post-election reshuffle, May said she appointed ministers that reflect “the wealth of talent and experience across the Conservative Party”. He said a new election might be necessary later this year or early in 2018. “I and other senior colleagues have made that clear to her”, he told The Andrew Marr Show.
Newspaper headlines saw her as just clinging on.
May had repeatedly ruled out the need for a new election before changing her mind.
The alliance makes some modernizing Conservatives uneasy.
And maybe – I was speaking to one minister today who said effectively, Brexit is a dead duck.
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Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who is gay, was among the first to express disquiet over a deal with the ultra-conservative DUP. But the party still won the largest number of seats and votes – with 318 seats and 12,667,213 votes (42.8% of the overall vote).
