Election 2017: Parliament is Hung, and Your Finances May Fall Out of Balance
Election 2017 has given us a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives squeaking back in as a minority Government. Do your finances hang in the balance too?
Welcome to a new nation – sort of. In a shock result, Election 2017 has left Britain with an unclear answer on who exactly will be leading us into the future. What happened?
Finances may have been a major tipping point in the vote. Early reactions have suggested that (as reported in our election special) the Conservatives’ cost cutting plans, in particular around funding care partly through the value in people’s homes, may have been a major part of their undoing.
Will we have to go through all of this again? Another election within the next year looks likely though not inevitable. For now the Conservatives are going to stumble on with support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland or DUP for short with whom they will try to proceed with Brexit negotiations and their manifesto. This will through an arrangement named ‘confidence and supply’ in which the DUP would support the Government in any confidence votes and also provide votes to pass legislation.
The two parties are fairly closely aligned – the DUP are known as the Conservatives of Northern Ireland so this should work. Differences do exist that could pose problems along the way. There may be differences on Brexit, the DUP also do not agree with the Conservatives on cuts to winter fuel allowance, and there be issues with the Northern Ireland peace process in which the UK Government is meant to be neutral but for now cannot really be.
In all likelihood, the DUP will support the Government on a vote by vote basis in return for extra money for Northern Ireland, and an effective veto on any legislation that they particularly didn’t like.
So what happens from here? Nobody knows exactly. But there is one thing we can say for certain – as each new piece of new legislation is introduced, we’ll be by your side, to explain how it affects you, and to highlight how it in may boost up or bust down your finances. Stay tuned – we’re not done yet.
One last thing: Your voice can be heard in one other way – by joining our Collective, and speaking up to take your energy tariff to new lows. It works by uniting you with your friends and neighbours across the UK, to barter the best deal possible from the energy companies.
By joining, you can finally make change happen – in your bank account. But hurry – registration closes on June 19th. Click here to sign up, and here to learn more.
