YP Letters: Local parties can become kingmakers at Westminster

IT seems Theresa May is a woman of her word. Prior to the General Election, we were warned against a coalition of chaos. Few believed it would happen and yet she has emphatically delivered – just not in the form anyone was expecting.

The result of this monumental misjudgment is a minority government that is rapidly being forced to come to terms with a May/DUP friendship with its Northern Irish counterparts. The DUP will exact a high price for their co-operation, most likely in the form of investment for Northern Ireland’s schools, healthcare and infrastructure.

London’s focus has been forcefully shifted outside of the Westminster bubble. Just as the SNP’s crushing victories drew the eyes of the government north of the border, heads in Whitehall now look to the west.

The interests of a small number of voters now hold enormous political sway in Parliament. This is the result, firstly, of a voting system afflicted with an increasingly ulcerous democratic deficit. However, it is a clear indication of the potential that smaller parties have, even under first past the post.

Had their voters in Northern Ireland instead opted for, say, the NI Conservatives, those MPs would have been absorbed into a much larger Conservative bloc where their voices would have been far less audible and May would be sitting in a far prettier position. However, by turning out in large numbers for a non-mainstream party, the portion of the electorate whom the DUP represent, have become kingmakers – able to demand investment and political preference.

The morning after the election, the PM promised business as usual. Westminster obliged by, as usual, overlooking the needs of much of England, including Yorkshire. Yet far from the electoral earthquake in Northern Ireland, a reading of a different sort flickered on the political Richter Scale. The Yorkshire Party, recently formed to give a voice to our neglected region is now the sixth most voted-for party in England and registered on a national level, finishing third in three seats, outpolling the Liberal Democrats in seven seats and the Green Party in five. Not bad for a party not yet four-years-old.

If voters in Yorkshire can learn anything from the current constitutional crisis, it is that if enough of us support local parties, not only will we turn the heads of those in Westminster, but Yorkshire, once itself a royal throne of kings, could once more be kingmaker.