Why has Arlene Foster resigned as Democratic Unionist party leader? Most of the DUP’s 27 assembly members and reportedly four of its eight Westminster MPs signed letters calling for a new leader, so Foster would have needed Houdini-level skills to survive. Her tumultuous six-year tenure as DUP leader and Northern Ireland’s first minister in effect came to an end on Wednesday with the announcement she would step down from the roles on 28 May and the end of June respectively. Why the revolt? Party grassroots blame Foster and her allies for the trade barrier down the Irish Sea, a result of the Brexit deal’s Northern Ireland protocol that Boris Johnson negotiated with the European commission. Unionists fear it weakens their position in the UK and nudges them towards a united Ireland. The DUP cheered Brexit, stymied Theresa May’s efforts to soften the impact on Northern Ireland as insufficient, and paved Johnson’s path to Downing Street. Turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind. DUP assembly members fear that angry voters will abandon them for harder-line unionist rivals in next year’s assembly election. Dumping Foster gives them a scapegoat and a chance to turn the page. Any other reasons? Free Presbyterians – Christian fundamentalists who comprise a dwindling but still important chunk of the party’s base – seethed when Foster and two DUP ministers abstained last week on an assembly vote to ban gay conversion “therapy”, forfeiting a chance, as the late former leader Ian Paisley would have put it, to save Ulster from sodomy. Others never forgave Foster for the “cash-for-ash” scandal, which revealed sleaze and blundering at Stormont. What happens next? Now that Foster has quit, the party will have its first leadership contest. Paisley, who founded the DUP in 1971 as a bulwark of British and Ulster Protestant identity, coronated Peter Robinson as his heir in 2008 and Robinson smoothly passed the crown to Foster in 2015. A tiny electorate of 41 assembly members, MPs and peers will choose her successor.
Who are the contenders? Gavin Robinson and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, both MPs and relative moderates, are tipped to run. Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Jr, outspoken MPs and Brexiters, may also run. An early favourite is Edwin Poots, a Stormont assembly member and agriculture minister who has taken a hard line against the protocol. On Wednesday, he pulled out of a planned meeting with an Irish government counterpart, burnishing his anti-protocol credentials. What impact could a new leader have on Northern Ireland? He (little prospect of she) would inject more flux into an atmosphere already made febrile by sporadic street disturbances, rancour in the power-sharing executive, demographic changes and Sinn Féin’s push for a referendum on Irish unity, but would struggle to extricate the DUP from quicksand. Flintier resistance to the protocol may shore up the party’s rightwing flank but accelerate the defection of moderates to the Alliance party. It could also destabilise the executive, potentially heralding a return to direct rule from perfidious London, and could trigger a fresh election – in which Sinn Féin could pip the DUP as the biggest party, ushering in Michelle O’Neill as first minister. Such grim scenarios prompt another question: why would anyone want to lead the DUP? • This article was amended on 29 April 2021 to clarify that while Foster announced her resignation on Wednesday, she will not leave her DUP and first minister roles until May and June. A subheading was also changed to make clear she has resigned from her DUP leadership role, not from the DUP itself.