Foster’s departure leaves Northern Ireland braced for more division

The dramatic ousting of Northern Ireland’s first minister Arlene Foster looks set to deepen divisions at Stormont on everything from a customs border in the Irish Sea to the use of the Irish language.

But the immediate collapse of Northern Ireland’s government looks unlikely as political parties prioritise stability amid the continuing fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Foster called time on her five and a half year term as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and head of Northern Ireland’s regional assembly on Wednesday afternoon, succumbing to pressure from a large number of her Stormont and Westminster representatives who demanded a challenge to her leadership.

Although she will not stand down as party leader for a month and will continue as first minister until the end of June, a small list of potential successors is emerging, led by Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland’s agriculture minister. On Thursday afternoon he became the first to declare his candidacy.

Other possible contenders include MPs Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, Sammy Wilson and Gavin Robinson. The DUP may choose to separate the role of first minister and DUP leader, which could allow Poots or another Stormont member to become first minister, while an MP led the party.

Jim Wells, a DUP member and Stormont representative who lost the party whip in 2018 after publicly criticising the leadership, said Poots would “take the party to the right, which is where a lot of us want to go”.

Poots has already attracted controversy. A creationist who has led four different Northern Ireland ministries including health, his 2011 decision to uphold a ban on gay men donating blood was described by a court as “infected by apparent bias”.

Foster was known for her progressive and moderate approach on some issues, including abstaining as most of her DUP colleagues voted against a recent proposal to ban gay conversion therapy.

But while this set Foster against some in her party, she was ultimately pushed out for not doing enough to protect Northern Ireland’s position in the UK after Brexit.

Feargal Cochrane of the university of Kent argued there will be a tougher tone from whoever replaces Foster, a decision that will be made by the party’s 41 Stormont and Westminster representatives. “Very few unionist leaders have come to power preaching the gospel of compromise and moderation and this process is likely to see a race to the bottom over who can act toughest against the [Northern Ireland] protocol and or Sinn Féin and the Irish government,” he said.

The protocol, part of the UK’s 2019 Brexit deal intended to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, has horrified unionists by installing a customs border in the Irish Sea.

After Foster described the deal as a “gateway of opportunity” in January, the DUP later joined a legal challenge against it. Many unionists still do not feel their voices are being heard, and frustrations have spilled over on to the streets with weeks of protests and an eight-night spate of riots earlier this month. 

Jonathan Tonge, a professor of politics at Liverpool university, said the DUP could express its opposition to the protocol by refusing to join North South Ministerial meetings, as Poots has been doing and as Foster threatened to do. Beyond that, there are limits to the DUP’s options, he said, because negotiations on the protocol are between the EU and the UK.

Tonge said he did not believe Foster’s successor would go for the “nuclear option of downing the institutions” of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government because the party would not come out of a vote well.

An opinion poll in February showed support for the DUP at its lowest level in two decades, with just 19 per cent of the public backing the party, well below the 24 per cent posted by nationalist party Sinn Féin and just a touch ahead of the 18 per cent support for the centrist Alliance Party. 

“They’re walking a tightrope trying to keep the institutions afloat in the hope that polls pick up,” said Tonge. The DUP took 28 seats in the March 2017 elections, just one more than Sinn Féin. 

The mechanics of Northern Ireland’s politics mean that Sinn Féin must also resign and resubmit its deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill. She could refuse to re-enter government without concessions from an incoming first minister, which could force an election. O’Neill has said she will work with whoever takes over but stressed the need for progress on “social reform, political change and economic prosperity”.

The Irish Language Act, to make Irish an official language of Northern Ireland, is one potential flashpoint. The DUP had indicated it would support the act — Wells said he expected Poots, as first minister, to oppose it because “the Irish language has been weaponised by Sinn Féin”. 

Still Sinn Féin, even with its comfortable position in the polls, has publicly said it would be “irresponsible” to push for an election now. “There is an election due next May and I think we all have a responsibility to try and manage the situation through to then,” Conor Murphy, Sinn Féin’s finance minister, told BBC. He later told the FT that the incoming first minister would have to be bound by the agreement struck with the executive which took power in January 2020.

Naomi Long, leader of the centrist Alliance Party, told the Belfast Telegraph the “very significant challenges” Northern Ireland is facing meant now was not a good time for an election, while Matthew O’Toole, an assembly member from the SDLP, told the FT that an early election “is not good news for anyone”, especially since the assembly was only restored last year after a three-year shutdown.

The Ulster Unionist Party, the third biggest in Stormont, could expect to win some of the DUP’s more moderate voters in an election. Their leader Steve Aiken told the FT that his party was also against collapsing the institutions. “We’re still in Covid and we still have a lot of things to do before we get to the election season,” he said.

“Monday is the centenary of our nation,” he added. ‘We should be looking to it with hope and pride, and now everybody is talking about the DUP leadership contest.”