Opinion

Newton Emerson: The DUP could do a lot worse than have Poots as leader - with Foster, it already has

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Edwin Poots has been to the fore in the latest round of Stormont talks - could he be a contender for DUP leader? Picture by Hugh Russell
Edwin Poots has been to the fore in the latest round of Stormont talks - could he be a contender for DUP leader? Picture by Hugh Russell Edwin Poots has been to the fore in the latest round of Stormont talks - could he be a contender for DUP leader? Picture by Hugh Russell

EDWIN Poots has become a prominent DUP figure at the Stormont talks, raising a question only whispered until now of whether he could be a candidate to replace Arlene Foster.

Jeffrey Donaldson, long rumoured as Foster's successor, appears to be shying away from a putsch.

When Poots attempted a putsch against Peter Robinson in 2014, neither the DUP nor the public could imagine him as leader or first minister.

Yet Poots had been a better minister than Foster, despite holding the poisoned chalice of health, while Foster only had to master a few jots and tittles at the enterprise department.

Health workers found Poots accessible and he had an excellent relationship with his Sinn Féin opposite number on the assembly's health committee, Maeve McLaughlin, which is how the checks and balances of devolution are supposed to work.

The DUP could do a lot worse. With Foster, it already has.

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The mood at Stormont talks has not been helped by frantic buck-passing over the health strike.

All five parties sent a letter to secretary of state Julian Smith saying they would increase nurses' pay in a restored executive, so he now had "the flexibility to intervene" and promise to raise pay himself if the Stormont talks deadline of January 13 is missed.

Politically, perhaps. But legally, Smith would still need to put direct rule legislation through Westminster, as happened after a similar letter urged action on historical institutional abuse compensation.

What parties really need to say is they will accept direct rule, at least on health, if Stormont talks fail.

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Complaints from trade unions that health workers are being used as a political football may have some validity, yet this is some audacity from comrades who like a kickabout themselves.

With all Stormont parties committing to union demands, strikes could at least have been postponed until after the January 13 talks deadline.

The nurses' strike had a high ballot turnout of 43 per cent among Royal College of Nursing members, with 96 per cent voting for action, reflecting a genuine snapping of patience by a moderate union.

Things are a little different with Unison, known for its comedy 1970s internal politics. It managed a ballot turnout of just 23 per cent, with 92 per cent for action.

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Sammy Wilson, newly promoted to DUP chief whip, has appealed to Boris Johnson to "cement the union" with a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Ironically, this nonsense is distracting from the very real infrastructure boost Johnson is about to send our way.

The Conservatives plan to borrow an extra £80 billion over the next four years for road and rail projects to cement themselves into the so-called red wall constituencies they have just taken from Labour.

This pledge appears to be serious - Treasury rules were changed last month to make the borrowing possible.

Under the Barnett formula for equalising public spending across the UK, that means an extra £2.5 billion over the next four years for Stormont to spend as it likes, which works out at £125 million more per year than the DUP's confidence and supply deal, continuing for twice as long.

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Arlene Foster has demonstrated all her aptitude for delivering new politics at Stormont by dismissing widespread nationalist calls for the return of 50:50 police recruitment and saying nationalist parties should instead encourage people to join the police.

It never seems to occur to unionists that when nationalists call for a return to 50:50 recruitment, they are calling for people to join the police.

Given that applicants are deterred by dissident intimidation, there is hardly a more effective action anyone could take. It is not as if handing out leaflets would make any difference.

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Sinn Féin is taking its electoral setback last week seriously but some of its supporters are dismissing the party's loss of 60,000 votes as the result of anti-Brexit pacts.

By looking at the previous general election, the effect of pacts is easy to quantify: Sinn Féin surrendered 8,500 voters to the SDLP and Alliance in South Belfast, East Belfast and North Down, while the SDLP and Greens surrendered 3,000 voters to Sinn Féin in North Belfast, for a net loss of 5,500, or less than a tenth of the party's overall drop in support.

Assuming changes in support would have applied in the pact constituencies anyway brings this figure down to 3,000, or one in 20 of the votes Sinn Féin lost.

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The Conservative Party is embracing Northern Ireland-style politics by boycotting BBC programmes, just like the DUP, and threatening to decriminalised non-payment of the television licence, just like Alliance.

If that last comparison seems a little odd, it is because former Alliance justice minister David Ford's repeated requests for decriminalisation really were aimed at keeping low-income people out of the courts, rather than just keeping broadcasters in their place.