Opinion

Alex Kane: Given the choices ahead, the DUP ousters might have done Arlene a favour

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Outgoing DUP leader Arlene Foster and leadership contender Edwin Poots. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire.
Outgoing DUP leader Arlene Foster and leadership contender Edwin Poots. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire. Outgoing DUP leader Arlene Foster and leadership contender Edwin Poots. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire.

Will a new leader of the DUP make much of a difference? Will Edwin Poots or Jeffrey Donaldson be able to settle the nerves of those MLAs who wanted rid of Arlene Foster?

Fair enough, they wanted a scapegoat, but will a new goat be strong enough to butt away the pile of problems that remain for the DUP? In other words, with an election due by May 2022 how likely is it a new leader will deliver victory rather than simply minimise losses?

Matters will be complicated by the fact the new leader will not be first minister. Sinn Féin has indicated the choice of leader is a matter for the DUP and the DUP alone. What is not so clear, though, is whether Sinn Féin might have a problem with the choice of first minister: because, if it does, we'll be straight into another crisis for the executive.

If, for example, it wanted some quid pro quo for accepting the nomination (and some in the party might want a bit of payback for the hits they took over the Storey funeral) is there anything the DUP could offer without provoking a furious internal or external reaction? Might Sinn Féin be tempted to ask for a cast iron guarantee of support for an Irish Language Act and movement on the commitments contained in last year's New Decade New Approach (NDNA) document?

I say document, by the way, rather than agreement, because NDNA was the work of the NIO and Irish government rather than the end product of inter-party negotiations. All the parties have what might be described as plausible deniability when it comes to the contents, not least because they ran straight up the steps into their Stormont offices after the most cursory read of it. Which might raise difficulties for the DUP and Sinn Féin if they had a problem which required a form of words or some sort of segue to resolve.

My gut instinct is that it probably won't come to that. I think both understand the anger which would be heaped upon their joint heads if they decided to shift straight into crisis mode as we ease out of lockdown and into something resembling social 'normal.' And I'm pretty sure that neither really wants an early election on the back of a crisis which even some of their own supporters wouldn't understand. So I'm reasonably confident (unusual optimism from me) the executive will keep functioning.

But the DUP still has a problem. The protocol. At some point it becomes inevitable the new leader will have to tell the party the protocol is staying in place. It won't actually come as a shock to the MLAs, MPs and party officers, because they've known the truth for some time. But the news is really going to cause anger across loyalism and the Orange Order, both of whom have shifted to 'close down the assembly' territory if the protocol remains. Quite what benefits they imagine would flow if that were to happen is anyone's guess, especially when it would probably mean some sort of direct rule by the very government which negotiated and supports the protocol.

The DUP doesn't want the assembly to collapse. It knows it's an empty gesture response, because Boris Johnson is very unlikely to bin the protocol in exchange for its return: knowing, as he does, that Sinn Féin wouldn't return in those circumstances. The DUP also knows, as I noted last week, that collapsing the assembly would probably finish the assembly once and for all. That might please a section of loyalism and party-political unionism, but it doesn't resolve their more specific problem with the protocol and with a government which is, in their eyes, prone to betrayal.

All of which puts the DUP leader in quite a bind. Damned if he pursues the learn to live with the protocol option. Damned if he pursues a showdown with the government option. Damned if he cuts some sort of deal with Sinn Féin. Damned if he allows the DUP to be openly steered by pressure outside his party. Damned if he dithers. Damned if he provokes an early election (the 2017 assembly election is still the stuff of nightmares for the DUP). Reminds me of the Frasier line: 'Abe Lincoln had a brighter future when he picked up his tickets at the box office.'

Ironically, those who brought down Arlene Foster might actually have done her a favour. She can now sit on the sidelines, freed from having to make decisions which only differ in the scale of their unpalatable repercussions. And there's a vacancy over at the UUP.