Theresa May secured the Democratic Unionist Party’s support for her minority government on Monday. The DUP’s leaders had traveled from Northern Ireland to Great Britain to finalize an agreement with the prime minister’s Conservatives, who hold a plurality in the United Kingdom’s Parliament, to support her government in a crucial vote on a controversial legislative package later this week.
May entered into talks with the DUP, a right-wing regional party that won 10 seats in June’s elections, to try to shore up her government after a democratic disaster for her Conservatives, who lost their majority in the House of Commons earlier in June. With the support of the 10 DUP lawmakers, May would have the numbers she needs to put down a likely series of legislative challenges from her Tories’ main rival, the resurgent Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, and allied opposition factions.
Ahead of Monday’s talks, DUP leader Arlene Foster said the parties had already neared a deal and pledged to make the terms “totally transparent.”
“We will be able to finalize the agreement between ourselves and the Conservative Party,” Foster told the commercial broadcaster Sky News. “As the prime minister herself has said, the deal will be public.”
And, in an article published in the Belfast Telegraph newspaper ahead of Monday’s talks, Foster had written that “I believe we are close to concluding an appropriate agreement with the Conservative Party to support a minority government on a confidence and supply basis.” A “confidence and supply” agreement requires a smaller party to support a governing party in key votes in parliament, such as a no confidence motion or a budget report.