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British voters have been frantically googling the small Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose 290,000 votes and 10 seats in Parliament hold the balance of power in the wake of the UK election.
Key points:
- Party forged in Protestant areas of Belfast several decades ago
- DUP remembered as the party of Ian Paisley
- Now one of the most socially conservative in Europe — read the full manifesto here
As Britons awoke to news that Prime Minister Theresa May would have to turn to the DUP for support after unexpectedly losing her parliamentary majority in the general election, the Northern Irish party's website crashed under the weight of curiosity.
A giant screen on Sky News asked: "Who are the DUP?"
Data from Google showed searches spiked significantly in the hours after the election results emerged.
So who are they?
Some remember it as the party of Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant cleric who once heckled the Pope, 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 hard-line unionists fighting to remain part of Britain against mainly Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland.
What does this mean for Brexit?
The party is now led by former-lawyer and unionist Arlene Foster.
Ms Foster has previously said "no-one wants to see a hard Brexit" and has spoken about the need to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
"What we want to see is a workable plan to leave the European Union, and that's what the national [referendum] vote was about it — therefore we need to get on with that," she said in an interview with Sky News.
"No-one wants to see a hard border, Sinn Fein [the opposing party in Northern Ireland] talk about it a lot, but nobody wants a hard border."
Many political pundits are anticipating Ms Foster's views will potentially undermine Ms May's plans of delivering a hard Brexit, despite the DUP being the only major party in Northern Island to support leaving the EU.
The DUP could also force the Conservatives to abandon some of their most controversial manifesto pledges such as scrapping the "triple-lock" state pension.
What other policies do they support?
The party is one of the most socially conservative in Europe, having sought to maintain some of the continent's strictest restrictions on abortion and consistently opposed same-sex marriage.
The DUP has successfully kept Northern Ireland as the only UK country without same-sex marriage, but the party denies being "anti-LGBT".
It recently backed the right of a Belfast bakery to refuse to make a cake with a gay rights slogan and proposed a law to allow religious business people to refuse to serve people where that would conflict with their religious beliefs.
The owners of Ashers bakery refused an order placed by gay activist Gareth Lee, claiming the message was inconsistent with their "sincerely held" religious beliefs.
At least one senior DUP party member has defended creationism, the theory that the world was created by God 10,000 years ago.
MP Sammy Wilson, the DUP's former environment minister, has also been labelled a "climate change denier" for his public views on climate change.
Founder Ian Paisley also once declared the country and western style of dancing as "sinful".
The party also wants a review on terror laws and a defence shake-up.
How do Conservatives feel about this potential partnership?
In a pointed Twitter post linking to a speech describing the legalisation of same-sex marriage as life-changing, openly gay Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson reminded the potential new partners of the government that she was a "Protestant Unionist about to marry an Irish Catholic".
Ms Davidson's Scottish Conservatives went from one seat to 13 in the election, giving the national party one of its few success stories on the night.
On Facebook, a post by a group calling for a protest against the Conservative-DUP coalition attracted the interest of over 3,000 people.
Ms May's former cabinet colleague George Osborne also could not resist a dig with a cartoon in the Evening Standard newspaper he edits, which made an unflattering reference to the Orange Order, the group founded in 1795 who march the streets of Northern Ireland every year to protect Protestant interests.
The cartoon showed a member of the order in a trademark black bowler hat and orange sash with a tiny, angry-looking Ms May in his front pocket.
Reuters/ABC
Topics: world-politics, political-parties, government-and-politics, elections, england, ireland, united-kingdom
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