Alex Kane: Arlene Foster is assailed with problems, from inside and outside the DUP

In the past few weeks Sammy Wilson, Ian Paisley, Edwin Poots, the DUP’s four peers and even a number of MLAs (during the party’s largest ever rebellion over the Executive Committee – Functions – Bill a few weeks ago) have had what might be described as ‘a public pop’ at the leadership on a variety of issues.

Jeffrey Donaldson and Nigel Dodds, albeit more discreetly, advised Arlene Foster to pause the bill until internal fears had been allayed. Richard Bullick, a former advisor – and easily the most respected advisor the party has ever had – launched a torpedo at the bill. And now, within hours of the latest Covid restrictions being published Poots, knowing the damage he was about to do to Foster, had another very public pop.

None of this behaviour is usual for the DUP, so what’s going on? While it’s hard to pin down any one person trying to wrestle the leadership from Foster it has sometimes looked as though a group – a bit like the party-political equivalent of Murder on the Orient Express – is taking it in turns to plunge the knife. The problem with this kind of strategy is that it prolongs the agony without a guaranteed clearing of the path for a new leader who would enjoy the unanimous support of these political assassins.

Sources close to the leadership dismiss claims that Foster is under threat and insist she continues to enjoy the overwhelming support of the party’s representatives and members. But when some of those representatives issue their own statements (rather than going through the press office); offer off-the-record briefings to journalists; defy the whip over votes; and take to the airwaves to say what they know will be interpreted as a direct or indirect attack on the leader or party policy, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to wonder if Foster has problems.

The criticisms from Simon Hamilton, the chief executive of Belfast Chamber – ’the voice of business in our city’ – will have hit and hurt her particularly hard. He was a former finance minister and regarded by many as a future leader of the DUP. He would also have been viewed as fairly close to Foster, having known her from when they were in the UUP and both opposed to key elements of David Trimble’s strategy.

He was brutal in his assessment of the latest proposals (on the front page of Thursday’s News Letter): ‘... the restrictions announced yesterday by the NI Executive feel more like an economy breaker than a circuit breaker ... and will result in significant job losses and major damage to our economy.’ As with Bullick, he will have been aware that his criticisms would have raised concerns among his old friends and colleagues within the party. As one of those former colleagues told me on Thursday: “It’s never good when the party is taking a blow from someone like Simon.”

The DUP is facing a potential double whammy: it seems certain that the consequences of the pandemic, which may include further lockdowns and a whopping hit to the local economy, will continue for months on end; and, while it’s not yet certain, Boris Johnson does seem to be nudging towards a no-deal exit from the EU, which raises an entirely different raft of problems for the DUP, not least its relationship with the other Executive parties.

There are some within the DUP who think a no-deal outcome is preferable to the Withdrawal Agreement and the NI Protocol, because it removes the very specific constitutional threat within the protocol. I wouldn’t be that sanguine. Such an outcome leaves NI entirely at the mercy of Boris Johnson (and his dependence on a regenerated English nationalism) and Boris Johnson is no particular friend of either unionism here, or even of Northern Ireland within the UK.

On the other hand, if a deal is, in fact, done in the next few weeks and keeps most of the protocol in situ, it still leaves unionism in a situation which Jeffrey Donaldson describes as risking the ‘economic and constitutional carnage presented by arrangements (the Withdrawal Agreement) that should not have been agreed in the first place’. In other words, while the nature and scale of the problem facing unionism as it heads into 2021 will be determined by the deal/no deal outcome, it will still be a huge problem.

Something else will be weighing on Foster’s mind: as it will be on the minds of others in the party. What if there is another general or Assembly election? While that may seem unlikely at this point, look at how many other unlikely things have happened in UK politics since 2016. I’m not predicting an election, but nor am I dismissing the possibility; particularly if there is a collapse of support for Johnson or another collapse of the Assembly. In unpredictable times (and these are the most unpredictable in my lifetime) anything is possible.

The latest LucidTalk poll (comparing present support with support in the 2017 Assembly election) has the DUP slightly behind SF. It indicates a rise in TUV support from three to six. The UUP has slipped slightly and Alliance is continuing its ‘surge’. One should never overegg the figures, but there is the suggestion of a perfect storm possibility that would deprive the DUP of its lead position and the first minister’s role and see the overall number of unionist MLAs fall again.

All of which leaves the DUP with two questions: Is Arlene Foster the best leader to see it through the ongoing crisis (which could get worse); and, if not her, then whom? These are questions which the UUP should consider, too. Another poor showing in the LucidTalk poll is bad news for it, especially at a moment when the DUP has so many obvious problems. Heading into the 2021 centenary unionism could do with looking stronger and more coherent than it is right now.