I can’t help thinking of David Squires Article 50 comic from the Guardian
The real Jamie Pollock own goal
At least Jamie Pollock knew he had got his team relegated with that goal. Theresa May has to wait to see how much damage she has caused her own party.
Let’s hope that at the next election the Tories make this kind of own goal.
Yep, that seems to correlate pretty much with my understanding.
For info, here’s the relevant bit of the GFA:
(Acquired from
and thread, which is also directly relevant to all this, and very much worth a read.)
Once again, I am neither a solicitor, nor an expert on the GFA - I just have to live with more than a few of the consequences.
If line dancing isnt a sin it is in pretty bad taste
No. She compares badly to almost all chairs
I think whether their agreement is in violation of the GFA would very much depend on just what exactly is in the agreement. If they manage to get Stormont back up and running again it doesn’t really matter, as all devolved issues will revert back to there and the UK government won’t have a say, so it doesn’t matter that the DUP might have any influence over them. If that doesn’t happen though, and part of the confidence and supply agreement deals with issues relating to devolved powers, then they probably would be. The Irish government met with the Brokenshire (the sec of state for NI) yesterday, and made this very clear to them.
Oh, I agree, and I’m glad to hear that ‘cooler heads’ are bringing reality to bear in the situation. I’d be less concerned if things weren’t already destabilised in at least two different ways, right now, and if our Conservatives weren’t already showing lots of examples of acting for short-term gain, and hock the consequences - and that they also didn’t have a habit of assuming the the rules don’t apply to them, up to and past the point where they run splat into hard reality. 
I’m glad to hear of sane voices in the NI govt. We need them.
I’m not sure who you’re referring to here, as there isn’t currently any NI government (it collapsed several months ago, they had an election, but still couldn’t form a government, and then the whole thing was put on hold to have the UK general election). And when there was one before it wasn’t being run by the sane people in NI, but rather the two most extreme parties (SF & the DUP).
People worrying about this just aren’t fully aware of the details, there is a small chance it could cause a problem, but it doesn’t look like a real concern to me (because the kinds of things the DUP are likely to ask for from the Tories won’t be related to the devolved powers of the Stormont assembly).
Don’t underestimate the chair.
I was using the looser sense - the remaining bits that keep things functioning, such as they are, like the same Secretary for State that you mention. Sorry if that caused confusion.
I’m still glad to hear of sanity, because I sure don’t trust the majority party in the pending ‘coalition’ to bring much to bear.
Brokenshire isn’t part of the NI government, he’s a Conservative minister of the UK government, the Northern Ireland Secretary. The role used to have a lot more power, but after the GFA his job is basically to ensure the implementation of the agreement, and negotiate between the various parties when required. Though if they fail to restore the Stormont assembly in the coming weeks he’ll take on those old responsibilities again, which is the situation that might make things problematic.
Which is something none of us want.
Yeesh, this really was the perfect time for the Cons to go wading in trying to curry political favour, wasn’t it.
:facepalm_emoji:
My apologies to all decent, hard working, correct thinking chairs everywhere.
By the way, French political commentators compared Theresa May’s maneuver (and its results) to Jacques Chirac’s one in 1997.
Granted, Chirac’s was more disastrous, by far.
In the annals of snap election own goals, there is perhaps no finer specimen than that of Robert Muldoon, who famously called one while hammered:
He lost.
Okay, you win! Oh my…
Talk about an awful hangover…
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