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Theresa May, Despite U.K. Election Setback, Will Form a Minority Government The British Election That Somehow Made Brexit Even Harder
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, smarting from a humbling snap-election defeat that cost her Conservative Party its governing majority, said on Friday that her party would stay in power by forming a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. LONDON — What a mess.
“What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and the ability to provide that certainty, by commanding a majority in the House of Commons,” Mrs. May said outside No. 10 Downing Street, using the full name of her party. “As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies, in the Democratic Unionist Party in particular.” Britain was supposed to wake up on Friday with the political clarity, finally, to begin formal negotiations to leave the European Union, a process scheduled to start in 10 days.
Mrs. May had called an election three years early in the hope of winning a stronger mandate as Britain prepares for two years of negotiations over its withdrawal from the European Union, but voters did not reward her gamble. Instead, they produced a hung Parliament — one in which no party has an outright majority in the 650-seat House of Commons. Instead, Britain is staring at a hung Parliament and a deeply damaged Prime Minister Theresa May, her authority and credibility fractured by her failure to maintain her Conservative Party’s majority in Parliament.
The fractured voting — which saw strong gains by the largest opposition party, Labour, and modest gains by a smaller party, the centrist Liberal Democrats — was a further indication of stark political divisions in Britain, days before formal negotiations over withdrawal from the European Union are scheduled to begin in Brussels. Ignoring demands that she resign, the prime minister said on Friday that she would cling to power by forming a minority government with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
The uncertain outcome in Britain immediately prompted speculation that the start of negotiations might be delayed, or that the talks could drag for longer than two years, as scheduled — speculation that European officials, in public at least, tried to tamp down. “I don’t think we should talk about some prolongation of the deadline,” said the Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka. Mrs. May insisted that since the Conservatives had won the most seats and the most votes, she was entitled to form a new government, despite winning only 318 seats, 12 fewer than in 2015, and short of a formal majority of 326 in the 650-seat House of Commons. The Democratic Unionists won 10.
The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said he was ready for talks to begin immediately. “We are waiting for visitors coming from London,” he said. “I hope that we will not experience a further delay in the conclusion of these negotiations.” But minority governments tend to be fragile and short-lived, and many expect that Mrs. May will be a lame-duck prime minister, that she may not last as long as a year and that she will not lead her party into another election.
Despite the loss of at least 12 seats for the Conservatives, Mrs. May will try to form a working majority with the Democratic Unionist Party, which won 10 seats on Thursday. With 318 Conservative seats plus the D.U.P. seats, Mrs. May would have 328 votes — just above the 326 needed for a majority. Mrs. May confirmed her plan to form a minority government after a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. For European Union leaders, who were expecting her to emerge with a reinforced majority, the uncertainty is unwelcome, especially as they try to prioritize issues such as climate change and their relationship with an unpredictable and unfriendly President Trump. There is also resentment that, once again, the British have complicated things out of political hubris and partisan self-interest.
The D.U.P., a historically Protestant party that seeks to maintain Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, has close ties with the Conservatives, and it supported Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Mrs. May called the snap election three years early — and her decision backfired. So did decision by her predecessor, David Cameron, to call the referendum on European Union membership in the first place.
It was unclear on Friday what price the D.U.P. might exact for its support. “The prime minister has spoken with me this morning, and we will enter discussion with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to bring stability to our nation at this time of great challenge,” Arlene Foster, the party’s leader, said at an afternoon news conference. She did not give any details. “I thought surrealism was a Belgian invention,” said Guy Verhofstadt, a former prime minister of Belgium who is the European Parliament’s chief coordinator on Britain’s exit from the bloc. “Yet another own goal: after Cameron, now May.”
There is a precedent for this situation: The Ulster Unionist Party, another faction from Northern Ireland, helped shore up the government of John Major, a Conservative prime minister, from 1992 to 1997. Without question now, Britain is not ready for the negotiations, having spent the past year largely avoiding a real debate on the topic, other than a vague argument over the merits of a “hard Brexit” (as a clean break from the European Union is known), versus a “soft Brexit,” which would require more compromise.
In some respects, the election on Thursday also resembled the one in 2010, when the Conservatives won the most seats in a general election but did not have a majority of seats. Under David Cameron, Mrs. May’s predecessor, they formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. Brussels, by contrast, has a negotiating team led by a former European commissioner, Michel Barnier, and it has published detailed negotiating guidelines, agreed upon by the bloc’s 27 other member states. While Britain seems more divided, the European Union appears to have achieved unusual unity.
Whatever emerges will most likely be more fragile than that coalition, which lasted five years. And the “Brexit” clock is ticking. On Friday morning, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, warned that London faced a firm deadline to complete talks – March 2019 — and that any delay raised the risk of failing to reach a deal.
In a coalition, the junior partner takes ministerial seats, is part of day-to-day decisions by the cabinet and shares a platform with the governing party. In a minority government, in contrast, a smaller party merely agrees to support the governing party in votes on legislation, but is not necessarily part of the leadership. “We don’t know when Brexit talks start. We know when they must end,” Mr. Tusk wrote on Twitter. “Do your best to avoid a ‘no deal’ as result of ‘no negotiations.’”
Even if Mrs. May were to survive in the medium term, her authority has been badly damaged. She is certain to face demands from lawmakers in her own party that she change her leadership style and consult more widely. Nigel Evans, a senior Conservative lawmaker, blamed the party’s so-called manifesto, or platform, over which Mrs. May had to reverse course within days, for the election failure. For now, the scramble in London is over the shape of the government. Mrs. May’s Conservative Party lost its majority but still won the most seats, doing particularly well in constituencies that backed withdrawal from the European Union. The revitalized Labour Party did better in urban seats that were opposed to leaving the bloc.
Mr. Evans suggested that divisive proposals on the financing of long-term care for older adults — from which Mrs. May had to backtrack — would not have been included in the manifesto if Mrs. May had consulted more widely. “We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we shot ourselves in the head,” he told the BBC. Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, ran what political analysts regard as an excellent and optimistic campaign, promising an end to austerity, more money for health and social welfare and free tuition. Labour gained 29 seats to reach 261, with one seat left to decide. But that would still leave it far short of a majority, even in combination with other sympathetic parties, especially since the Scottish National Party lost 21 of its 56 seats, a serious blow to its goal of Scotland’s independence.
Paradoxically, the Conservative Party actually increased its share of the total vote from 2015 — when it won a commanding majority in Parliament — but not by enough in key constituencies. Under Britain’s first-past-the-post system, what matters is not a party’s share of the overall vote, but simply who places first in any given constituency. Only a year ago, the vote on European Union membership had seemingly divided the country along clear lines between “Leave” and “Remain.” The vote on Thursday erased such clarity, delivering mixed messages, even as Britain remained deeply split — by region, class and generation.
The share of the vote captured by Labour on Thursday — 40 percent — was significantly higher than what many parties that have formed governments in the past have won. Mrs. May’s challenge will be to form a coherent Brexit position that can command support from a much more diverse set of legislators, said Gus O’Donnell, a former Cabinet secretary and member of the House of Lords.
For Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, the election was a big success. He outperformed expectations as a campaigner and his party saw a large rise in its share of the vote, even though it came behind the Conservatives. Though he remains unlikely to become prime minister, Mr. Corbyn’s position as leader of Labour has been secured, despite the hostility of many lawmakers in his own party. He noted that the Democratic Unionists will have their own interests about a post-Brexit relationship with Ireland, including border and customs regulations. Conservative legislators from Scotland, on whom Mrs. May will also depend, will urge her to try to retain access to the single market of the European Union, which Mrs. May previously rejected.
There was speculation on Friday that Mrs. May would no longer have a parliamentary majority for her preferred strategy of making a clean break with the European Union, which would include leaving its single market and customs union. “Remember, she’s still got lots of hard-line Brexiters in her own party who don’t want to stay in the single market, want to move away from the European Court of Justice and don’t want to pay any money to the E.U.,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “She’s got to try to bring all that together.”
During the referendum campaign last year, leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party favored leaving the bloc, but they also want to keep tariff-free trade with their neighbor, Ireland, and they want a “comprehensive free trade and customs agreement” with the European Union — a formulation that sounds close to remaining in the customs union.
The Labour Party wants to keep as much access as possible to the single market. Roland Rudd, a senior figure in the “Remain” campaign last year, said that, after Thursday’s election, Parliament may be more pro-Europe.
“We now have, for the first time since the referendum, an opportunity to have a much better relationship with the European Union,” said Mr. Rudd, the brother of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who narrowly won re-election on Thursday. “A close arrangement is back on the table.”
Eric Pickles, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, said that while Mrs. May was likely to stay on as prime minister, the government’s negotiating strategy might have to be refined.Eric Pickles, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, said that while Mrs. May was likely to stay on as prime minister, the government’s negotiating strategy might have to be refined.
“I think we now have to build a grand coalition of support,” he said. “I don’t see how realistic it is not to be leaving the single market and the customs union — but there is leaving and leaving, and it is going to be up to negotiations.” “I think we now have to build a grand coalition of support,” he said. “I don’t see how realistic it is not to be leaving the single market and the customs union – but there is leaving and leaving, and it is going to be up to negotiations.”
In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, the prospect of the D.U.P. acting as kingmaker raised other concerns. The Democratic Unionists are the harder-line, mainly Protestant party in Northern Ireland and support Brexit. And they are particularly committed to keeping Mr. Corbyn out of power because of his history of sympathy with Irish Republicans, including Sinn Fein, which was the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.
Brendan Halligan, chairman of the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin, said that a D.U.P. role in the British government could unsettle the intricate peace arrangements that make up the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which largely ended the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Arlene Foster, leader of the D.U.P., said that she had spoken to Mrs. May, “but I think it is too soon to talk about what we’re going to do.” She said she would explore with Mrs. May “how we can help bring stability to our nation.”
The Northern Ireland Assembly, known as Stormont, is divided because of a deadlock between the D.U.P. and its republican rival, Sinn Fein. But earlier Friday, Mrs. Foster was not optimistic about the tenure of Mrs. May, saying: “It will be difficult for her to survive given that she was presumed at the start of the campaign, which seems an awfully long time ago, to come back with maybe a hundred, maybe more, in terms of her majority.”
“It will be a terrible dilemma for a new Tory government: The more they accommodate the D.U.P., the more they put out Sinn Fein, and the more they will come into disagreement with the Dublin government over north-south relationships,” Mr. Halligan predicted. Mrs. May is certain to face demands from lawmakers in her own party that she change her leadership style and consult more widely. Nigel Evans, a senior Conservative lawmaker, blamed the party’s manifesto, which had been prepared by a small group and hit traditional Tory supporters. “We didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we shot ourselves in the head,” he told the BBC.
He said of the D.U.P.: “Their only real aim is to protect the union with Britain and prevent any drift towards a special status for Northern Ireland. They will put a stop to Sinn Fein’s attempts to push for that. That will draw a reaction from Sinn Fein, a knock-on effect in terms of forming a new power-sharing executive in Stormont.” For the past year, the debate about the exit from the European Union in Britain has been limited to vague promises of repatriating British funds from the European budget, controlling immigration and negotiating a favorable trade deal. Britons have heard little about the cost of leaving the world’s biggest free-trade bloc — not least the tens of billions of pounds owed to Brussels for existing liabilities such as pension obligations and investment commitments in the current European Union budget.
Making matters even more complicated, the Labour leader, Mr. Corbyn, and a top ally, John McDonnell, have in the past expressed support for the Irish republican movement, and in particular for Sinn Fein and its leader, Gerry Adams. That support makes the D.U.P. particularly eager to block anything that could lead to Mr. Corbyn’s becoming prime minister. “The British public have not at all been prepared for having to pay a large check to Brussels to settle our debts in this divorce,” said Peter Ricketts, a former ambassador to France and now an independent lawmaker in the House of Lords.
Andy Pollak, a former director of the Center for Cross Border Studies in Belfast, said he feared the consequences for Irish politics. Mrs. May told voters that she wanted to start negotiating a trade deal immediately — something categorically ruled out by the 27 countries on the other side of the table. They want to talk about a divorce settlement first: about the rights of European Union citizens in Britain, and of Britons in Europe (doable, officials say); about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which remains a member of the bloc (trickier); and about the most contentious issue in any divorce: the money.
“The D.U.P. will always take the hardest of hard lines when it comes to Brexit or any slight compromise towards the republicans,” he said. “It’s all bad now. I don’t know what they will demand from the Tories for their support, other than a hard line on Brexit. The chances of a return to power sharing in the North are now lessened further. A lot of the D.U.P. were never happy with power sharing with Sinn Fein anyway.” Only when “sufficient progress” has been made on these issues, the European Union says, can the talks move on toward a framework for a future trade deal and to designing a transitional agreement that would bridge the end of British membership in the bloc — March 2019 — until a final deal is ratified by the other 27 states.
Even before talks have started, the trust level is weak. A dinner Mrs. May had with the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, was leaked in astonishing detail to a German newspaper by Mr. Juncker’s team. The leaks were widely condemned by officials — but their content was described as accurate.
Mrs. May had described her vision of a post-Brexit Britain in much the same way as she did to her country’s voters: prosperous, open to the world, and closely intertwined with Europe’s single market — the status quo, but without the open borders, the budget contributions and the oversight of the European Court of Justice. “Let us make ‘Brexit’ a success,” she said at the dinner.
The next day, after a call from Mr. Juncker, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany gave a speech in Parliament. “I have a feeling that a few Britons are deluding themselves,” she said. “That, however, is a waste of time.”
“There is no desire to punish Britain,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a former adviser to the German president and now director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. But for the European Union to remain a viable and attractive club, leaving it must come at a cost, he said. “There has to be a difference between being in and being out.”
Since taking over as prime minister last July, Mrs. May has talked incessantly about the exit from the European Union, while saying very little of substance. Repeating that “Brexit means Brexit” and that she would “make a success of Brexit,” the prime minister presented herself to voters as the person to get the best deal for Britain — but without defining the deal.
The Evening Standard, a London newspaper edited by a Conservative former chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, published 10 questions a month ago about the exit from the European Union, challenging the government to answer them. Among them: How is the withdrawal going to increase trade after leaving the biggest free-trading bloc in the world? How is market access for London’s financial services industry going to be secured? How is migration supposed to be cut to the tens of thousands when no one can identify the businesses whose labor supply will be restricted?
“Not one of these questions has been even addressed, let alone answered, by the main political parties in this election,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial on the eve of the vote. “As a result, it provides no mandate for the details of Brexit.”
In any case, officials say, the mandate matters less than the balance of power at the negotiating table in Brussels.
“We have a weak hand of cards,” said one senior British official, who requested anonymity to discuss the government’s position “The E.U.’s hand is much stronger.”