Who are the DUP: Britain perplexed at Theresa May’s new Northern Irish allies

British voters spent Friday frantically Googling the name of a small Northern Irish party whose 290,000 votes and 10 seats in parliament hold the balance of power in the national parliament representing the United Kingdom’s 65 million people.

As Britons awoke to news that Prime Minister Theresa May would have to turn to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for support after unexpectedly losing her parliamentary majority in an election, the Northern Irish party’s website crashed under the weight of curiosity.

A giant screen on Sky News asked “WHO ARE THE DUP?” and data from Google showed searches spiked significantly in the hours after the election results emerged.

Some remembered it as the party of Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant cleric who once heckled the Pope himself, calling him the antichrist.

The DUP forged its combative brand of British nationalism in the Protestant areas of 1970s Belfast as the bloody “Troubles” pitched hardline unionists fighting to remain part of Britain against mainly Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland.

Others noted that the party now was one of the most socially conservative in Europe, having sought to maintain some of the continent’s strictest restrictions on abortion and consistently opposed gay marriage.

It recently backed the right of a …read more