Newington's Greg Rosen looks at the history of hung parliaments and how Northern Ireland's DUP could benefit.

While the election result has come as a shock to many political commentators and politicians, it is not without precedent. To understand the likely next steps over the coming days and weeks it is worth looking at recent history

The UK’s First Past the Post electoral system has rarely delivered hung parliaments at general elections over the last century (2010, February 1974, 1929 and 1924 being the main occasions). That said, there have been several occasions that elections have delivered small overall majorities to governments which have been lost in subsequent by-elections shortly after the general election to produce hung parliaments. Thus for much of the 1974-79 parliament Labour governed as a minority, having lost the majority of three it had secured at the October 1974 election, and likewise John Major’s government lost its parliamentary majority for the latter part of the 1992-1997 parliament.

These coalition and minority governments proved surprisingly resilient and difficult for Oppositions to dislodge.

It is almost unheard of for Opposition parties to combine in a hung parliament to vote out the party that “won” both the most parliamentary seats and the most votes (as the Conservatives did this time) and to replace them with a government comprising or led by the “runner up” party (in this context Labour). The last time this happened was following the 1923 election.

It has been almost always the leader of the largest party in parliament that leads the government in the circumstances of a hung parliament. In 2010-2015 the hung parliament led to formal coalition which proved very strong indeed. On most other occasions the leader of the largest party in Parliament led a minority government with the support of a formal or informal deal with one or more opposition parties. While the Lib-Lab Pact of 1977 was a more formal deal with agreed pledges and promises, much of the support on which the 1970s and 1990s minority governments depended involved less formal deals with Northern Ireland parties.

This is the most likely outcome following the June 2017 general election and the effective working relationship that Theresa May has already built with the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will stand her in good stead. If Theresa May can secure that she will be in a strong position to be able to form a stable minority government.

A significant impact of such deals in the past has been to elevate the focus on Northern Ireland investment within the context of the government’s industrial strategy. In the 1970s it led to much talk of a possible oil or gas pipeline from the UK mainland to Northern Ireland, and more specifically for millions of pounds of UK government support to bring the ill-fated DeLorean car factory (manufacturer of the iconic car of the Back to the Future film) to a site near Belfast. Perhaps a legacy of this election will be that Belfast could challenge Manchester for the focus of attention it enjoyed in the era of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse?