The MP who is overwhelming favourite to be the DUP's next leader has previously voiced opposition to the party being led from Westminster.
North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds is the bookies' clear favourite to succeed Peter Robinson at the head of the north's largest political party, with Finance Minister Arlene Foster assuming the first minister's role.
But Mr Dodds, who gave up his assembly seat in 2010, told the authors of a book about the DUP that he believed the party could not be led by an MP.
However, his remarks did not appear in the book – The Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland: From Protest to Power – but were alluded to by one of the authors, Professor Jon Tonge, during a contribution to The View on BBC.
In the interview two years ago, Mr Dodds was asked whether he saw himself as a future leader of the DUP.
"I can’t see anybody being in the slightest bit interested in your forthcoming publication in my answer to that. In politics, who knows what happens?" he said.
"I am in Westminster now, I am not even in the assembly. In my view you have to be, in the Northern Ireland of today – I agree with Mark Durkan, you cannot be a leader of your party without being in the assembly."
Mr Dodds has given no indication whether he still holds the view expressed in the interview.
