The Wall Street Journal - Battered at Polls, U.K.’s May Seeks to Retain Power
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June 9, 2017. Jason Douglas, Paul Hannon.
U.K. prime minister turns to Northern Irish party DUP in effort to form government.
LONDON—Prime Minister Theresa May turned to an unlikely partner in a bid to hold onto power, seeking on Friday to push ahead with talks on the U.K.’s exit from the European Union even after British voters rebelled against her Conservative Party.
A year after Britons chose to part ways with the EU in a referendum, voters—particularly young ones—turned out in numbers not seen in two decades to deliver a shock to the British leader, denying her the majority she had gambled to secure. The results cast doubt on her party leadership and her course for a clear split with the bloc.
The reckoning for Mrs. May shows Brexit is an issue that continues to convulse British politics. The surprise outcome was the result of a host of other factors as well: a uninspiring campaign by a prime minister criticized for calling the election opportunistically; anxieties over domestic issues such as health services; and a backlash against Brexit among young people, who turned strongly to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Though the Conservatives came in first by a wide margin, they still lost 13 seats and control of Parliament, clouding the country’s path out of the EU and prompting Mrs. May to reach out to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to form a majority parliamentary alliance with her Conservatives.
Anthony Wells, director of political and social opinion polling at YouGov, said the vote gave young people who stayed home for the Brexit referendum a chance to make up for their inaction.
“We’ve had Trump, we’ve had Brexit, and both were instances where people thought it was never going to happen and didn’t bother to vote,” he said. “Those surprise results made it more important for people to vote for what they believe in.”
On Friday, the prime minister seemed determined to cling to office, but some of her Conservative colleagues suggested they have different ideas. If before the election her cabinet served at her pleasure, now she serves at theirs. And even if her battered party can avoid a damaging leadership battle, the instability of minority government means the country could soon be set for another general election.
The vote results could potentially force Mrs. May to try to tread a softer path with closer ties to the bloc—or portend a chaotic crash if she fails to line up the parliamentary support she will need as time runs out to reach a deal.
The electoral debacle fueled public unease—and in some cases private rage—among Conservatives over Mrs. May’s leadership. Anna Soubry, a Conservative lawmaker, said Mrs. May must think about her position as prime minister after running “a pretty dreadful campaign.”
“She is in a very difficult place,” Ms. Soubry told the British Broadcasting Corp. early Friday.
Fending off calls for her resignation, Mrs. May turned to the DUP, a small socially conservative Northern Irish party formed by firebrand preacher Ian Paisley in the 1970s, to give her the right to govern. The party’s 10 seats are enough to give the Conservatives, who won 318 seats with one district still to declare, a majority in Britain’s 650-seat Parliament.
“This will allow us to come together as a country and channel our energies towards a successful Brexit deal,” Mrs. May said in a sober-faced appearance outside her Downing Street residence after receiving permission from the Queen to form a government. She later told local broadcasters she was “sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats who didn’t deserve to lose.”
DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party would enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how to “bring stability at this time of great challenge.”
The precise terms of the Conservatives’ arrangement with the DUP are still to be hammered out, but past minority governments have been backed on critical votes by smaller partners in return for policy concessions. The question is what the DUP, whose conservative views on gay marriage and abortion stand out in the U.K., will demand.
The party has expressed support for Mrs. May’s approach—which includes leaving the EU’s single market for goods and services to take full control over immigration—but some of its positions suggest she will come under pressure not to make an abrupt break.
The DUP has set out a Brexit wish-list that highlights demands aimed at protecting Northern Ireland’s small economy that could influence the U.K.’s overall strategy, including a call for agricultural subsidies for farmers after Brexit, ongoing access to EU development funds for poor regions and a “frictionless” border with EU-member Ireland. Mindful of the economic risks, it is hostile to one of Mrs. May’s signature pledges—that no deal in Brexit talks is better than a bad deal.
Speaking in Edinburgh, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said the election results show that “the reckless pursuit” of a Brexit that takes the U.K. out of the single market must be abandoned. She accused the Conservatives of putting party interests before the country’s.
“In less than a year, they have caused chaos on an industrial scale,” Ms. Sturgeon said.
The prime minister had pitched herself as the best person to lead the country through Brexit, in a campaign frequently overshadowed by domestic issues and security concerns after the U.K. was hit by three terrorist attacks in three months.
Mr. Corbyn, her Labour opponent, energized some voters, hammering her party over austerity cuts, including to police spending, and called for nationalizing the railroads and raising taxes on high earners.
Young people appeared to have turned out in larger numbers than in recent election. University towns and districts with a higher proportion of younger voters saw jumps in Labour’s share of the votes in the double digits.
Both the Conservatives and Labour increased their share of the vote at the expense of smaller parties, attracting 82.4% of votes cast—the highest combined share in nearly 50 years.
Because Britain’s exit polls lack the deep detail of their U.S. equivalents it is hard to say exactly what motivated voters. But it is clear they were motivated: Turnout hit 68.7%, its highest level since 1997.
Canterbury, a Conservative stronghold, switched hands to Labour for the first time since 1918, in a shift that appears to have been driven by the city’s large student population, among whom Labour’s pledge to abolish tuition fees also proved popular. Turnout rose to 72.7% from 64%.
A survey of 14,000 people who voted Thursday, commissioned by Michael Ashcroft, a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, found that 67% of those aged 18 to 24 who voted went for Labour. The Conservative Party was supported by 59% of those aged 65 and over.
The Conservatives had also hoped that voters would abandon the UK Independence Party, which had long sought Brexit, but has struggled to find a further purpose. UKIP’s vote fell by almost 11% compared with 2015, but not entirely to the Conservative Party’s advantage. As a result, the party failed to win seats it had hoped to gain from Labour in the northeast of England.
“It looks like it was far more evenly spread, and far more of that UKIP vote went back to Labour,” Mr. Wells said.
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