THERE are few qualities more important to good leadership than sound judgment and it stands to reason successful leaders have it in spades.
Only a few short weeks, a majority would not have questioned Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to hold a snap election and most expected her to achieve the thumping majority she and her party appeared so sure the electorate would deliver them.
The voters, as Mrs May now knows only too well, had very different ideas, of course. By last Friday morning it was clear that neither Mrs May nor her strategists had noticed that the people of England and Wales – mostly the young – were so fed up of austerity and cuts to public services that they were willing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in their droves. It was also clear Mrs May’s judgment was seriously flawed at the very least.
And, worryingly for the country, her actions in the days since have suggested it does not appear to be getting much better. Indeed, jumping into a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) may well be a classic case of making a bad situation worse.
You can perhaps see the instant appeal of the party’s 10 Westminster seats to the significantly reduced Tories, of course; a slim majority, after all, is better than none. But is it really? As former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major has pointed out, the confidence and supply agreement between Arlene Foster’s party and Mrs May could end up being both unnecessary – the DUP would not vote down the Tories as long as Mr Corbyn is in charge of Labour – and costly to the government. It could have a significant impact on the Northern Ireland peace process.
Sir John, who called the deal “dubious”, knows a fair bit about peace in Northern Ireland, since it was his Government that laid the foundations for the Good Friday Agreement. He fears that any pact with the DUP leaves Mrs May open to accusations that her government is no longer an “impartial honest broker” in the quest to restore the power-sharing arrangements at Stormont.
And his suggestion peace should not be regarded as a given is surely prescient since the DUP represents only one side of what is part of the country still divided very much along religious lines.
Lord Trimble, the former leader of the rival Ulster Unionist party, has dismissed such fears as scaremongering. But it remains difficult to see how such perceived bias could aide the already fragile situation at Stormont.
There is also the question of how a deal with the ultra-conservative DUP, a party that eschews the sort of hard fought for social progressions, such as gay marriage and abortion, that many elsewhere in the British Isles hold dear, will go down in other parts of the UK. Indeed, it is likely to stick in the craw of a significant number in Mrs May’s own party.
So, will the DUP deal be a price worth paying for the Government? That remains to be seen. For now, the quality of Mrs May’s judgment remains in question.
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