Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Once again, Arlene Foster shows how not to be a leader

DUP leader Arlene Foster's new nationalist, republican fans are hard to imagine
DUP leader Arlene Foster's new nationalist, republican fans are hard to imagine DUP leader Arlene Foster's new nationalist, republican fans are hard to imagine

How not to be a leader, by Arlene Foster; when stuck for words, exaggerate, insult or make a wild claim that will at least get people talking.

Last month it was an Andrew Marr interview, this week one on Sky. Sinn Féin want to impose Irish on everyone, she told Marr. Nationalists and republicans opposed to abortion, she said on Sky, tell her they will vote DUP. (Ian Paisley’s typical ‘no, look at ME’ response is his DUP-supporting priest.)

What goes on in Foster’s head? The question has an extra edge since a pro-choice campaigner uncovered her speech to a 1992 conference of her then Ulster Unionist Party, announcing that neither divorce nor abortion were available in the Republic, thanks to a constitution ‘riddled with Roman Catholic social and political doctrine’. All then true, of course. The now 47-year-old Foster has been slow to comment which suggested someone had convinced her least said on that the better.

British abortion legislation did not extend to Northern Ireland in 1992 any more than it does now. The 19-year-old Arlene Kelly’s tirade against the Republic’s constitution surely suggested she favoured reform then but she may simply have been showing herself sound on the traditional enemy. She was developing a Young Unionist reputation as ‘feisty’, not to be disregarded in an overwhelmingly stale, male party, became the sole female in public appearances of a lobby tagged ‘the Baby Barristers’, out to harass David Trimble every step of the way towards the Good Friday Agreement.

Successor in 2016 to chilly P Robinson, talked up (‘not teetotal’) as a secular liberal at least for a time by a few press handlers and their most gullible targets, that Arlene is remote now in the rear-view mirror. What the middle-aged Foster truly thinks on social issues is hard to gauge. Boasting of approaches from northern Catholics too conservative for the nationalist parties may simply be more bluff. Or, into her third year at the head of the Doc’s - and Robinson’s – organisation, she may have decided to blur any liberalism still in her system.

It is as dismal a tactic as the rest of her leadership, a refusal to get in front of social change in damning contrast to Sinn Féin, and even, belatedly, a fumbling SDLP. Instead of lamenting her form, some unionists complain that criticism ‘demonises’ her. Yet in what we have to suppose her considered reaction to the Republic’s abortion decision, she suggests northern parties are out of touch and deplores southern behaviour. It is as if she cannot process that the vote for liberalisation was a landslide in every age group except the over 65s, Mary Lou McDonald the most prominent Yes political campaigner.

Recognising the wrongs done to women is at last a vote-winner. The motor of Sinn Féin manoeuvring for several years and source of SDLP angst is that the young of the Catholic community are closer to their peers in the south and Britain than to orthodox Catholicism. A sizeable cross-section probably know their parents also support same-sex marriage, and abortion provision at least for ‘the hardest cases.’ Far from alienating voters the SF leadership are in a position they must be delighted with.

But what pops up in the Foster mind is the Catholic, unionist-voting unicorn.

Another lowering aspect of her new tack is that according to polls the bulk of DUP supporters are pro-liberalisation. Out of line with a tight-knit, disproportionately fundamentalist party membership, the voters may be more liberal than the Doc could have borne on abortion. For once, on this issue, why not lead from the front? DUP social liberalism is shy on gay rights. It does not include Irish. The dark soul of unionism, it is tempting to think, has an almost primitive fear of hearing and seeing the language of the stubbornly resilient native.

One of Foster’s most damning leadership failures was that collapse in February, after what were clearly prolonged, civil exchanges with Sinn Féin, of a deal to include Irish. When they saw the draft agreement the unprepared party combusted. Arlene in response so trashed and denied the draft – though in the DUP who could have believed her - that it is next to impossible to imagine her in future negotiations.

Her new nationalist, republican fans are hard to imagine. In her own mind, she is still perhaps first minister in waiting of any restored executive. The way she is going it will never happen.