Regulatory Alignment

Theresa May never needed to offer the DUP anything at all. She should simply have told them that if they did not back her, then they could go home and explain why John McDonnell was Chancellor of the Exchequer. But instead, she gave them more money than anyone in particular would have got out of McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. And are they grateful? Are they gracious? Are they hell! Spoilt children never are, and once you have paid the Danegeld, then you never get rid of the Dane.

The last Conservative Prime Minister was dependent on the Lib Dems, and the one before that survived by playing off what were then Northern Ireland's two Unionist parties and one maverick Unionist MP on a vote-by-vote basis, night after night for years. Lo and behold, 20 and more years later, they are back. Once you have paid the Danegeld, then you never get rid of the Dane.

But at least half of the hardcore Leavers on the Labour benches are also hardcore United Irelanders, and most of those on the Conservative benches would place withdrawal from the EU above the Union or anything else, so May could pass the Brexit deal of her choice with no more than 50 votes against it, and quite possibly with fewer than 30. There might even be a referendum on it across the United Kingdom, with Northern Ireland told to take or leave the result, even if that meant taking or leaving the Union.

That said, the DUP is lucky (as, in the other direction, were the Lib Dems) to be dealing with one of the two types of Conservative Leader, rather than with the other. David Cameron was the kind that is economically and militarily as hawkish as anyone could possibly imagine, while also being the most socially liberal figure in British politics, and that is saying quite something.

Whereas May is the kind that barely notices the outside world while making socially conservative noises that never come to anything despite the impression that Leader spends the evening sewing samplers to the sound of all of the Queen's Christmas Messages on a continuous loop, and while being economically well to the left of 80 per cent of Labour MPs. It will be interesting to see whether the requirement to have a more left-wing economic policy than most of the Parliamentary Labour Party will remain the requirement for even the mildest social conservatism into the next, Corbyn-dominated Parliament. Very probably so.

For be in no doubt, Corbyn will dominate whether or not he wins. Already, in a period of Conservative Government, High Street brands apologise publicly and profusely for having dared to advertise in The Sun and the Daily Mail. I am not necessarily happy about that, but there it is. No governing party, never mind any Opposition, has ever had anything approaching that level of cultural dominance. In such an environment, precisely what Conservative legislation in the post-Thatcher sense, including many measures of the type that New Labour introduced against the votes of Corbyn and McDonnell, would be possible even if anyone wanted to propose it? And that is before the next General Election.

Corbyn ought to bypass and blindside his enemies at The Guardian and the BBC, by saying that he would support Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the whole of Sky, provided that The Sun were moved entirely online and placed behind a paywall, and provided that Tom Watson and someone from Unite or Momentum were appointed to the Board of Sky. Any dissent would then be confined to a dwindling band of Labour MPs who had previously kissed Murdoch's feet for an entire political generation.

Notice the shift in the editorial positions of The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Times and the Daily Telegraph over the course of that generation. Not the party allegiance, but the reasons for it. Newspapers that took those titles' respective lines from the early to middle 1990s could not conceivably exist in Britain today. But, by contrast, the editorial positions of The Guardian, the Daily Mirror and the Morning Star are just as they were then: liberal, Old Labour Right, Left. Yet still, in a period of Conservative Government, High Street brands now apologise publicly and profusely for having dared to advertise in The Sun and the Daily Mail, so far. Think on.