The true cost of the Tories’ deal with the DUP | Letters

I am disappointed, though not surprised, that Theresa May has made a dishonourable deal with the DUP to keep her in office – in effect buying their MPs’ votes with £1bn of public money. I am old enough to remember how much more honourably James Callaghan acted in 1979. When his minority government was faced with a vote of confidence, he was urged (I’m sorry to say) by Roy Hattersley and the late John Smith to buy Northern Irish MPs’ votes by financing a gas pipeline between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. He refused, saying his government was not up for auction.

I am afraid that is more than Mrs May can now claim.
Donald Mackinnon
Newport, Gwent

• European funding to support less prosperous regions is distributed on the basis of an objective formula, measuring each region’s performance in terms of GDP. The analysis that underpins the current distribution of EU funds places Northern Ireland and much of north-east England on the same level of economic underperformance, when compared with Europe as a whole.

The UK has, since 2010, had no such mechanism for distributing funds to less well off regions. Indeed, it has declared that regionalism is dead. How strange therefore that the government can rustle up £1bn for Northern Ireland, when there is nothing extra for the equally disadvantaged north-east. I don’t suppose it has anything to do with political expediency?
Peter Smith
Newcastle upon Tyne

• Theresa May’s deal with the DUP is a sellout to all those who voted Conservative. Normally a Tory voter, I voted Labour at the election and will do so at the next if Mrs May remains at the helm. The prime minister has done an unholy deal with an intolerant party in a desperate bid to cling to power. Mrs May is the figurehead of a now – in her own words – nasty party and has alienated just about everyone.
Dominic Shelmerdine
London

• Being a so-called “minority government” doesn’t stop the government from governing – they have plenty of laws and precedent in place to enable them to do that for as long as they like. What it does stop them doing is passing reckless and ill-considered bills though parliament because only those bills with wide support across the political spectrum will pass. Not much wrong with that given some of the aberrations of the last few years. Indeed, it looks to be highly commended as bringing an over-mighty executive under the control of the elected legislature for a change.

Why should government expect to get its way all the time? It is only a rather curious feature of our very curious constitution that such an autocratic system should be considered normal, requiring a massive bribe to the DUP to sustain it.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

• Theresa May’s commitment to the armed forces covenant seems honourable at first glance to those of us on the mainland mindful of successive governments’ disservice to troops dispatched to Afghanistan, Iraq and likewise. But on the island of Ireland the insensitivity to the more subtle and nuanced reservations of nationalist parties will, by including this in her cobbled agreement with the DUP, likely set back a return to power-sharing in the north by months if not years. She has abdicated neutrality for political gain and thus proved herself to be a dishonest broker.
Alan Coombe
London

• Now that the DUP has extracted its price for its support of the government, might I suggest that West Country MPs strike a similar arrangement to benefit this area?
Dick Lloyd
Exeter

• With 10 DUP MPs delivering an additional £1bn for health, education and infrastructure in Northern Ireland, one awaits the enormity of additional riches that 13 Scottish Conservative MPs will be able to deliver for Scotland.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh

• So, the DUP are to get £1bn – from the British taxpayer. That’s a little over 500 quid for every man, woman and child living there. Is that the true cost of democracy in 2017?
R Neil Davies
Warninglid, West Sussex

• With regard to the Conservative party-DUP deal it seems there is a magic money tree.
John Fullman
London

• Hands up. How many of you voted Tory/DUP on 8 June?
Barbara Symonds
Birmingham

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