UK PM May confident of deal to keep top job

The announcement by Andrea Leadsom suggests that Prime Minister Theresa May and the Northern Ireland-based Democratic Unionist Party have struck an agreement or are close to one.

Mrs Foster described her meeting with the new Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, as "very positive", adding that she looked forward to a very positive relationship with the Irish premier.

For now, no one is talking about revisiting the principle of British withdrawal, a plan accepted by the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party after Britons voted in a referendum past year to quit.

May has not yet responded to a proposal from some Conservatives for business groups and lawmakers from all parties to agree a national position on Brexit.

SDLP Leader Colum Eastwood said: "The Prime Minister will have to do a lot more, however, to convince us that the DUP tail isn't wagging the Tory dog".

It is understood that DUP officials have sought meetings with opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, to take the temperature of amendments planned for the Queen's speech.

A DUP source told the Guardian: "The DUP is a unionist party and that means it has concerns for the people of the whole of the United Kingdom".

"What we are trying to do is obviously of great importance and is not to be rushed".

"If others decide that they are not coming back into the devolved administration here in Northern Ireland then those issues will have to be dealt with at Westminster", Ms Foster said on Monday.

"When you have a hung parliament, power shifts from the cabinet room to the floor of the House of Commons", one Tory MP said.

"I want to see us deliver Brexit and we are 100 per cent ready to get on with the job".

May has given no indication that she will change her plan for Brexit, though she has said she will try to achieve broader agreement across her party. Opponents describe that as a "hard Brexit".

Mr Brokenshire insisted the Government would honour its commitments in the Good Friday Agreement and warned that time was running out if power-sharing was to be restored and a return to direct rule from Westminster avoided.

The other 27 countries who make up the European Union have always said no to that and that the past needs to be sorted out before the future.

Both Sinn Fein and the DUP have their roots in "The Troubles".

"This is not tribal and pretty reasonable", Farron said. "We need them in the room".

Former prime minister David Cameron was forced to accept an amendment to the Queen's speech in 2015 that protected the NHS from measures in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) when Tory Eurosceptics, Labour and SNP MPs collaborated. Hard or frictionless? In the aftermath of the British general election we have been offered a dizzying menu of possibilities which have given rise to both the fear that the election result and the Conservative Party's dependence on the votes of the DUP will worsen the implications of the Brexit process for Ireland or else offer an opportunity for the process to be less devastating than feared.

On Brexit, Mrs Foster said the DUP wanted to see "a sensible Brexit and one that works for everybody".