The DUP: Election Winners and Losers

Yesterday's election has proved to be a humbling experience for a great many. Mrs May lost her majority. She was still clever calling the election based on the information she had at the time; without hindsight, it was the right thing to do. Now, though, she appears weaker than ever. If the people should not trust in princes, neither should princes trust in the people. She asked for a mandate and was denied it.

 

Labour supporters seem to be delighted, even though they have now lost their third general election in a row, and are still behind the Tories by some fifty-nine votes. Not quite the time for celebrations. The Lib Dem revival never materialised, with party leader Tim Farron barely keeping his Lonsdale seat. UKIP are all but wiped out and the SNP have been beautifully humbled north of the border. 

 

The real winners are the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, founded by the great Rev. Paisley. They are likely to prop up Mrs May's feeble government. The liberal left is already castigating them as terrorist sympathisers and extremists in an ironic twist of Tory criticisms about Mr Corbyn. Such barbs are grossly unfair; a good number of DUP MPs lost relatives to the IRA. Never was a political party made up of so many evangelical Christians; their stance on abortion and same-sex marriage is already being criticised. Perhaps yesterday's blog post about the rule of the saints was more appropriate than I first thought.