The process to depose and replace Arlene Foster as DUP leader and First Minister is turning into the kind of page-turner James Patterson could be proud of.
This morning’s new chapter comes from Ciaran Barnes in the Sunday Life and Suzanne Breen on BBC NI’s Sunday Politics.
Edwin Poots’ camp is briefing that he wants to be party leader but not First Minister.
Breen suggested that fellow Lagan Valley MLA Paul Givan is in line to be his pick for First Minister. Paul Frew (Poots’ campaign manager) would take over as Economy minister, and Mervyn Storey could take over in Education.
No suggestions yet about who would take over Poots role at DAERA, but Michelle McIlveen would have to be a frontrunner with previous ministerial experience in that department. [Update – BBC News NI understands “that Mr Poots would want to remain as Agriculture Minister, if he wins the party leadership” – which would mean the DUP have an all male team in the Executive unless they appoint a new Junior Minister.]
Givan is an incredibly incendiary choice, given his cack-handed decision to cut funding for the Líofa Irish language scheme in 2016. Sinn Féin would surely see his nomination as holding out barbed wire rather than an olive branch to The Executive Office. It would be operating under DEFCON 2 conditions and the stability of the devolved institutions would surely be at risk?
In many ways, if Poots truly wants to split the party and Executive leadership roles, Storey would be a more reasonable choice for First Minister. He’s about the most affable MLA I can imagine bumping into in the queue for a Ballycastle chip shop one weekend a few years ago, and while he is theologically conservative – both Givan and Storey have form in lobbying for intelligent design to be taught in schools – his manner feels less abrasive than Givan.
There is a strong sense, whether by accident or design, that the Caleb Foundation is taking back control of the thinking of the DUP. In 2012, Liam Clarke described the lobby group as “the rock on which the DUP was built”. (While part of the foundation’s Facebook Group, at that time, Poots explained to Clarke that he wasn’t a formal member of Caleb though admitted that some of his views coincided with the foundation as well as other organisations too.)
Michael Avila wrote a fascinating masters dissertation on Caleb Foundation back in 2017. As part of Conservative Evangelicalism, Identity, and Conflict in Northern Ireland: A Case Study of the Caleb Foundation he interviewed its chair, Wallace Thompson. You can some of his analysis in a May 2018 article in the Belfast Telegraph.
Yet for all the nods to Christian ethos, senior figures in the party may want to remind themselves that the fruits of the spirit – among which kindness and gentleness have not been at the forefront of the coup that led to Arlene Foster’s resignation – should be apparent in their political activity as well as their church work and family life!
With an Orange Man at the helm – whether Poots or Donaldson – and conservative (some might prefer the descriptor ‘traditional’) evangelical thinking back to the fore, if the DUP do become a less ‘broad church’, the party will need to do their sums to estimate how many voters they will secure or recover from the somewhat recently disaffected right wing, and how many they would then lose to the UUP and Alliance. A smaller but purer party may be ideologically and theologically attractive, but politically very unappealing at the polls.
Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is a FactCheckNI director; a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland; and a member of the Corrymeela Community.
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