The Financial Times (registration required) is reporting that a deal with the Liberal Democrats is the Conservative Party's second preference. They would rather pusue a deal with the DUP, SNP and Plaid Cmyru. On the central issue of public spending:
"...any support would be to protect their parts of the UK from the worse effects of any spending cuts - a tough demand on a government looking to reduce the £163bn deficit. But Mr Cameron's team believe it may be preferable to doing a deal with Nick Clegg's Lib Dems, who say that electoral reform would be the price of any post-election pact."
This implicitly undermines the Ulster Unionist and Conservative relationship even further. It also leaves a key local negative message against the DUP. It is hard to scaremonger about a hung parliament never mind the SNP if CCHQ seems to prefer such an outcome. The article also highlights that:
"The Tories also work closely with the SNP in the Scottish Parliament".
It predicts that:
"...the Democratic Unionists, the largest party in Northern Ireland with nine MPs, could use its muscle during debate over the Budget to extract concessions."
1 comment:
The DUP have now it seems given up even the pretence of being unionist.
Arlene Foster was complaining that the CU Manifesto used the term "Britain" in GB but "UK" in NI. Daft! Is she so out of touch with mainstream British thinking that she does not even realise that the informal versatile term 'Britain' is generally shortand for UK in GB, but generally shorthand for GB in NI?
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