Northern Ireland has a new executive. But unionism’s main party seems to be reverting to protest, not power
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party was originally a party of protest. Founded in 1971 by Ian Paisley, it stood for no surrender. It opposed every attempt by successive British governments to build power-sharing institutions, including the Good Friday agreement in 1998. Then, in 2007, the DUP decided to be a party of power, with Mr Paisley becoming Northern Ireland’s first minister. Since then, it has been the main party of government, first under Mr Paisley, then Peter Robinson and, until last month, Arlene Foster. But, under Edwin Poots, the DUP reverted to being a protest party once more.
Mr Poots’s ousting of Mrs Foster was essentially an act of bloodletting between the free presbyterian base of the original Paisleyite party and the DUP’s less doctrinaire members. Some of the latter, alienated by Mrs Foster’s mistakes over Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol, had already drifted away. But the ousting was a coup without a strategy for winning such voters back; it will lead to further defections. Instead, Mr Poots doubled down on the old religion. His priority was to redirect the party, not to govern Northern Ireland. On Thursday night that effort imploded and Mr Poots had to quit.
