While Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist party, agreed that Northern Ireland’s biggest group of MPs would be holding talks with the Tories, no firm deal appears to have been struck, and May herself mentioned her “friends and allies” only fleetingly in her “this is fine” Downing Street address. LONDON — The two top aides to British Prime Minister Theresa May resigned Saturday, sacrificed in a bid to save their leader from being toppled by a furious Conservative Party after a disastrous election wiped out May's majority in Parliament. But May’s closest aides, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, described by one anonymous cabinet minister as “monsters who propped her up and sunk our party”, might not get one of her categoric assurances. Downing St. chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who departed Saturday, formed part of May's small inner circle and were blamed by many Conservatives for the party's lackluster campaign and unpopular election platform, which alienated older voters with its plan to take away a winter fuel allowance and make them pay more for long-term care. In a resignation statement on the Conservative Home website, Timothy conceded that the campaign had failed to communicate “Theresa’s positive plan for the future,” and missed signs of surging support for the opposition Labour Party. Timothy and Hill had worked for May when she was interior minister, before she became prime minister in July last year in the chaotic days that followed the Brexit vote, and their influence had increasingly angered senior ministers. May’s party won 318 seats, 12 fewer than it had before May called a snap election, and eight short of the 326 needed for an outright majority. The main opposition Labour Party surpassed expectations by winning 262. However, Mr Timothy insisted Ms May was “the one political leader who understands this division, and who has been working to address it.”

Intriguingly, he said the Conservatives had failed to detect Labour’s surge, because “we were not talking to the people who decided to vote for Labour”. “Our manifesto was full of fear and the Labour Party’s manifesto was full of promises.”

Martin Selmayr, senior aide to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, responded to the resignations by tweeting the word “bauernopfer” — German for the sacrifice of a pawn in chess. She called the early election with her party comfortably ahead in the polls in the hope of increasing her majority and strengthening Britain’s hand in exit talks with the European Union. Instead, the result has sown confusion and division in British ranks, just days before negotiations are due to start on June 19. May wanted to win explicit backing for her stance on Brexit, which involves leaving the EU’s single market and imposing restrictions on immigration while trying to negotiate free trade deal with the bloc. The Times of London said in an editorial that “the election appears to have been, among other things, a rejection of the vague but harshly worded prospectus for Brexit for which Mrs. May sought a mandate.”

It added that “the logic leading to Mrs. May’s departure from Downing St. is remorseless.”

The Downing St. resignations came as May worked to fill jobs in her minority government and replace ministers who lost their seats on Thursday. Her weakened position in the party rules out big changes, and May’s office has said that the most senior Cabinet members — including Treasury chief Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd — will keep their jobs, but she is expected to shuffle the lower ranks of ministers. May’s Downing St. office said Conservative Chief Whip Gavin Williamson was in Belfast Saturday for talks with the DUP “on how best they can provide support to the government.”

The DUP, whose 10 seats would allow the government to get measures through Parliament, is a socially conservative pro-British Protestant group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and includes both environmentalists and climate-change deniers among its senior ranks. The DUP was founded in the 1970s by the late firebrand preacher Ian Paisley, and in the 1980s was a key player in the “Save Ulster from Sodomy” campaign, which unsuccessfully fought against the legalization of gay sex. She said she had received “categoric assurance” from May that gay rights would not be harmed by a deal with the DUP:

Davidson also labelled as “B****cks” – her asterisks, not mine, this is the Guardian – a claim by the Telegraph that Scotland’s Tories were set to “go their own way” in the wake of May’s hubristic result. Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. in which same-sex marriage is illegal. “It’s an issue very close to my heart and one that I wanted categoric assurances from the prime minister on, and I received (them),” said Davidson, who is engaged to be married to her female partner. “I could not care less what people get up to in terms of their sexuality. Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most. But the wooing of the DUP risks upsetting the political balance in Northern Ireland by aligning London more closely with the pro-British side in the divided province, where a power-sharing government with Irish nationalists is currently suspended. May's two closest aides resigned on Saturday, paying the price for the failure to crush the opposition Labour Party under its radical left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn. But Britain’s Saturday newspapers agreed she is just clinging on. “May fights to remain PM,” said the front page of the Daily Telegraph, while the Times of London said: “May stares into the abyss.”

But she seems secure for the immediate future, because senior Conservatives don’t want to plunge the party into a damaging leadership contest. “I don’t think throwing us into a leadership battle at this moment in time, when we are about to launch into these difficult negotiations, would be in the best interests of the country,” Evans said.
Prime Minister Theresa May's closest advisers, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, resign as her Chiefs of Staff amid criticism over their role in the Conservative Party's election campaign.