Attitude to women rooted in 70s: Arlene Foster

Despite being dethroned as DUP leader in an internal coup just under 12 months ago Mrs Foster last night backed the party’s candidate in South Down.

She told the News Letter that if she lived in the constituency her number one preference would go to “Diane of course, followed by other pro-Union candidates”.

Mrs Foster denied she was weighing into the row over Mr Wells’ resignation from the DUP and endorsement of the TUV candidate because she was bitter over his role in supporting the putsch against her last spring.

On Twitter earlier yesterday the ex-first minister said Mr Wells was guilty of having “thrown his toys out of the pram and gone off with the boys” because he “didn’t get his away” when his ally Edwin Poots failed to get selected for South Down.

“The fact that Diane Forsythe is a capable Unionist WOMAN is too much for Jim to bear. Just as he could never accept the fact that I was party leader as a WOMAN and he continuously agitated against me,” she tweeted.

In response to Mr Wells’ defection the DUP yesterday released a party video from the 2017 general election in which the former Stormont health minister is seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Diane Forsythe when she was their South Down candidate.

On the 2017 video Mr Wells refers to her as “an excellent candidate, she is young, she is able, her roots are in the Mourne community, she is a family person and she is also a marathon runner so this election can be a bit of a marathon as well so she will enjoy that. She is very fit and able for that, and we are looking forward to it and her to go out there and maximise the unionist vote in South Down”.

The daughter of veteran South Down DUP councillor Glyn Hanna won 8,867 votes and increased the party’s vote in the constituency by 9.3%.

A DUP spokesman defended her candidacy this year stressing that “this election is much more important than personalities. The seat totals after the count will decide whether Northern Ireland goes in the right or wrong direction for the next five years”.