Opinion

Claire Simpson: Arlene Foster's cheerfulness doesn't matter, her ability as a politician does

DUP leader Arlene Foster arrives at Clones for the Ulster GAA final
DUP leader Arlene Foster arrives at Clones for the Ulster GAA final DUP leader Arlene Foster arrives at Clones for the Ulster GAA final

THERE are many words in Irish which have no direct English translation. Personally I love asclán, which means gusset and also the amount of something, usually fodder, which can be carried under one arm. Breacaimsir is another favourite, meaning middling to fair, but unsettled, weather. And then there’s plámás - flattery or soft talk - which can be used as a noun and a verb.

Irish politics has had its fair share of plámásers - those TDs and councillors who worked their way up the greasy pole mainly based on their chat, rather than their policies. Charlie Haughey may well be our greatest-ever plámáser, but former taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern comes a close second. My abiding memory of Bertie will always be that famous photo of him grinning with former prime minister Tony Blair (arguably another plámáser) after the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

Bertie was certainly a personable politician. Yet his reputation took a battering over the Republic’s financial crisis. And it didn’t improve after the Mahon Tribunal found in 2012 he had not truthfully accounted for more than IR£65,000 in lodgments to bank accounts linked with him.

You’d think that with such a finding he might have retired gracefully from public life. But the thing about a plámáser is that chat, and being at the centre of chat, is their reason for existing. Bertie was back to his old ways last week when he opined that DUP leader Arlene Foster "needs to cheer up a bit" if she is to restore power-sharing at Stormont.

The DUP leader's problem, he claimed, isn’t that she’s hampered by a party unwilling to accept concessions to Sinn Féin or that she’s been publicly undermined by her predecessor Peter Robinson - it’s her demeanour.

Bertie claimed all Mrs Foster has to do is “cheer up a bit, and convince people that we can all love her, if she is [to] lead the parties back into the assembly”.

Speaking at an event in Co Meath to commemorate the Good Friday Agreement, he said the DUP leader is “not a very easy person, and had a terrible rough time during her life, but so did many others, and came across the line”. So speaks a man who sounds like he’s never had a “terrible rough time”.

I wonder would he have given the same advice to the famously cheery Ian Paisley (pre-Chuckle Brothers), or laugh-riots David Trimble, Jim Molyneaux and Peter Robinson? None of them were “easy people”. Nor did they need to convince the public to love them. Mr Paisley might have dismissed that as devilish idolatry. The DUP founder ruled by fear, Mr Molyneaux by intransigence and any attempt to get Mr Robinson or Mr Trimble to cheer up would certainly have had the opposite effect.

But as the first female leader of unionism, Mrs Foster is told she must take a soft approach. Be personable first, and the rest will follow. It worked for Bertie and Blair after all - most of the time.

That’s the problem with female politicians. If they’re not being sourpusses (Mrs Foster), they’re talking too fast (Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill), trying too hard (Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald) or not having a small enough bottom (an actual criticism levelled at Alliance leader Naomi Long).

There are few issues on which I agree with the DUP leader, but as a voter I really have little interest in her levels of cheeriness. What I want is for her to make a concerted and genuine effort to re-establish devolved government. Whether she does that with a scowl or a smile doesn’t matter.

It’s disappointing, if not all-too-predictable, that female leaders have to face the same old rubbish as the rest of us. Telling Mrs Foster to “cheer up a bit” is just a different version of the ‘cheer up love’ demands women often encounter from strange men on the street. Almost every woman has a story of being told to ‘smile’ by a man who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to tell them how to arrange their face to best suit him.

Disagree with Mrs Foster’s policies all you like. Criticise her party’s pact with the Tories, her stance on equal marriage or parading, but leave casual misogyny out of the argument. That’s when you lose.