Everyone talks about Boris Johnson throwing the DUP under a bus but there is still surprisingly little talk about the DUP doing the same to Arlene Foster.
Perhaps the metaphor is too gruesome. Someone described the DUP leader to me several weeks ago as “a wasp jar” - kept on the windowsill to catch everything that stings, before being chucked in the bin.
There have been rumours for over a year that Foster only remains in office to take the blame for inevitable U-turns on a Brexit backstop and an Irish language act.
This theory is supported by her robotic repetition of unchanged positions, while other party figures triangulate or fudge.
If Foster is playing this role, she can hardly be happy about it. She might be catching wasps unwillingly, accidentally or unawares. Nor is this likely to be a conscious party strategy. It might be an unspoken agglomeration of internal despair and the manoeuvrings of leadership rivals.
At the Conservative conference on Sunday, Foster caused a sensation in the London-based media by saying the DUP “would look at” a time-limited backstop.
This has been the party’s position for over a year, as she alluded to in the same statement, yet Monday’s papers and bulletins claimed the DUP had shifted dramatically by accepting a backstop in principle.
It looked like Foster had caught another wasp.
But then Jeffrey Donaldson, a probable successor, rushed to do the same.
He took to social media to head off a loyalist backlash against Foster’s remarks, not as an overblown display of loyalty to his leader but on his own terms.
One reading of Donaldson’s behaviour is that Foster can no longer contain all the hornets swarming around the DUP.
A new leader might be necessary to put the party’s setbacks behind it but this will be nowhere close to sufficient.
Anyone seeking to replace Foster knows something like the backstop is coming and they will have to take significant responsibility for it themselves. They cannot blame it on a predecessor, then expect unionism to shrug and move on.
Stormont issues are adding to the sense the jar is full and wobbling on the edge of the windowsill.
Foster has promised to restore devolution in time to prevent the decriminalisation of abortion on October 21, which would mean promptly agreeing an Irish language act, enraging many DUP members and supporters.
A News Letter suggestion two weeks ago that the party would take the opposite trade-off, accepting abortion to prevent an Irish language act, enraged other members and supporters.
In reality, the DUP will have to accept abortion and an Irish language act and could see both imposed from Westminster if it does not move with sufficient haste.
These are too many stings for the hapless Foster to draw. It is hard to see how the party can let her bow out gracefully, with a replacement diplomatically vowing to do better. There will have to be a blunt despatching of her leadership, followed by an acknowledgement of wider mistakes and challenges. No political party finds such a thing comfortable, let alone one that has never had an open leadership contest and whose entire culture is suffused with prickly pride.
That culture has room for repentance and Damescene conversions, as Ian Paisley senior and Peter Robinson demonstrated. However, this does not seem to be within Foster’s abilities, otherwise she would have sold the 2018 Stormont deal with Sinn Féin, or at least attempted to do so.
The DUP appoints its leaders at its annual conference, normally held in late November. It is becoming painfully apparent this year’s event is being kept under wraps. This may originally have been due to doubt over the timing of the RHI report. Now the conference will also coincide with a general election and a Brexit extension period, in which a deal will be linked to restoring devolution.
Once a conference date is announced, it will immediately be seen in terms of these timetables and the presumption Foster has to go will harden into a scheduled expectation. If the DUP does not replace her, it will be obvious it does not know where to go.
