Newington's Chris White considers what happens next following the unexpected election result.

Hung Parliament – what happens next

This morning there will be plenty of sore heads in CCHQ, and not because of the anticipated victory party. Instead Theresa May and the Conservatives are in a disastrous situation where the party has gone from being 20 points ahead in the polls to losing seats and facing a hung Parliament.

With one seat left to declare (Kensington, where after four recounts the result is too close to call and counting has been suspended until this evening) the Tories are on 318. This is short of the 320 needed to obtain a working majority once the non-voting Sinn Fein and Speaker and Deputy Speakers are removed from the equation.

Today and the weekend

Despite calls for her resignation for leading such a lacklustre campaign, Theresa May has gone to the Palace and received permission to form a Government from the Queen. Her first order of business will be to speak to the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. Traditionally a small ‘c’ conservative party, the DUP are natural bedfellows for the Conservatives, and Jeffrey Donaldson MP has already stated this morning that his party has “suddenly become very important and we will obviously talk to the Conservatives in the best interests of the UK.”

Formal coalition or confidence and supply?

The Conservatives have two options open to them. The first is to enter into a formal coalition deal with the DUP like they did in 2010 with the Liberal Democrats, and this would earn them a working majority of around 10. Given the experience of the Liberal Democrats in 2015 where they went from 56 seats to 8, the DUP may choose to avoid this by entering into a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement. This last happened in the UK in the late 1970s under Jim Callaghan, where the Labour minority Government was propped up by the Liberal Party until 1979. Early indications are that a formal coalition is unlikely, with a minority Government and confidence and supply situation the preferred situation.

Doing a deal with the DUP

The DUP have spent time talking to the Conservatives informally over the last two years should such a situation arise, but these discussions would have only been on a hypothetical basis. They will now become very real, though over the weekend the DUP will first want to consult internally to decide how best to approach matters. Northern Irish politics is also very unique. Stormont is currently suspended due to the collapse of power sharing until a deal can be struck. Negotiations were supposed to begin again on Monday with the Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire, but Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, has already indicated that this will now be put on hold until the situation in Westminster is resolved.

The primary ask for the DUP will be to protect Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, and to restore devolution in Stormont as quickly as possible. Whilst this is crucial, the Conservatives already support this, so the price of a deal will be in other areas, for example increased budgets for healthcare and education. The DUP are also acutely aware of the fact that, barring the Independent Sylvia Hermon in North Down, they are now the Westminster representation of all of Northern Ireland, given Sinn Fein don’t take their seats leaving half the province unrepresented. Just as the minor parties were squeezed on the mainland, in Northern Ireland the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP lost all their seats. Therefore the DUP realise that doing a deal solely for their benefit is not in their best interests, and it must be one that delivers for the whole of Northern Ireland, particularly in terms of finance and employment.  The DUP have already pointedly stated today that they plan to protect the triple lock on pensions, something that Theresa May ditched in her manifesto.

Alternative options

The Labour Party have also said this morning that they will try and form a Government, with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell saying they were “ready to form a Government” on Sky News. However, given the Parliamentary arithmetic it will be much harder to form a rainbow coalition with the Liberal Democrats, SNP and the Green MP. Labour is on 261 (with the possibility of winning Kensington taking them up to 262), SNP is on 35, Liberal Democrats 12, the Greens 1 and one Northern Irish seat – the independent Sylvia Hermon – giving a total of 310/311. The DUP would never do a deal to support such a rainbow coalition to support a Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn given his well reported historic links with the IRA, so any vote in the Commons would be defeated by a combination of the Tories and the DUP.

The first test of the new government

MPs will meet on Tuesday next week to decide whether to re-elect the Speaker, which will be a formality, so the first test of the new Government will be on Monday 19 June, the date scheduled for the Queen’s Speech. Whilst the Conservatives have the advantage of already having prepared their Queen’s Speech ahead of the snap election, they now have to negotiate this with the DUP, who will go through it with a fine tooth comb.

This will almost certainly be a more limited Queen’s Speech in ambition, though I would expect the Government to win its first Parliamentary test. What is certain is that the Government’s future legislative programme will now have to go through the slog of knife-edged votes at every legislative stage. In the run up to the summer recess, we may only see progress on a couple of minor legislative measures as the Conservatives and DUP hammer out the detail of what they are prepared to agree to.

The future for Theresa May

Be in no doubt, Theresa May is severely weakened, if not quite terminally, by these results. Having marched her party up the hill to the promised land of twenty point leads, she has lost them their majority and will be forever classified as one of the worst Conservative Prime Ministers. The Tory Parliamentary Party will be incandescent. This was not an election that they planned for, nor initially agreed to, and have lost a lot of well-liked colleagues such as Edward Timpson, Charlotte Leslie, Oliver Colvile, Rob Wilson and Gavin Barwell.

What is certain is that Mrs May cannot continue as before. In order to get her policies through, she will have to change her dictatorial style to become more collegiate and embrace full and frank consultation with the Conservative Parliamentary Party as well as the DUP. It is time to reintroduce the 1922 policy committees, shadowing the main government departments, instead of announcing policy from the centre and expecting the party to follow. I spent five years in and around the whips office of the last coalition Government, and saw the power of a hard core of 20 rebels. Now, Mrs May not only needs to keep the DUP onside, but also cannot allow even a small handful of four or five MPs to rebel. There will be some long nights ahead.