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Showing posts with label Arleen Foster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arleen Foster. Show all posts
Fra Hughes ✒ After 18 years as an elected member of the legislative assembly for Northern Ireland, 6 years as leader of the Democratic Unionist party and the last year as joint first minister, Arlene Foster’s political future is now in question.


When 75% of the elected party members called for a vote of no confidence in her leadership she resigned on the 28th of April 2021. The new leader of the party is to be elected in May and her position as the first minister of Northern Ireland will finish in June 2021 as we head towards assembly summer recess. An opportunity will then exist for the new leader to enter into dialogue with Sinn Fein who also hold the joint position of the first minister about how to proceed. That is accepting that the Democratic Unionist party decide to continue with its role within the Northern Ireland Assembly, which seems unclear. Bringing down the assembly has no real relevance except as a political stunt.

There have been many scandals during the 6 years of Fosters as leader of the DUP and to date not one of those scandals individually was enough to call her leadership into question. We had the Renewable Heating Initiative, RHI, which was seen by many as malfeasance in public office or possibly corruption when public subsidies of millions of pounds were given to private individuals and companies as part of a renewable energy programme.

The social investment fund also saw millions of pounds go directly to community groups and individuals whom many felt were just conduits for money to enter into the Republican and Loyalist paramilitary and political grassroots. Jobs for the boys and girls to help secure the Peace by bribing paramilitaries?

More recently Arlene Foster seemed to finally endorse the Irish language act. The DUP had for years refused to finance and subsidise an Irish language act that would allow the native indigenous language to hold the same position within Society as that of the coloniser English language. This may have upset hardline anti-Irish unionists both within and without the party.

When the DUP voted alongside the Conservative Party to endorse a Brexit strategy that would remove Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union some members of the DUP said any deal was welcome that removed Britain and Northern Ireland in its entirety from the European Union. The result of the Brexit deal between Boris Johnson and the EU has ushered in the Northern Ireland protocol. This has placed Customs checks for some goods between Britain and Northern Ireland in the Irish sea and not on the island of Ireland, which is seen as one integral body for Customs purposes and still resides within the European Union Single market as a special case.

As political unionism failed to renegotiate the Northern Ireland protocol they engaged with loyalist paramilitaries and their representatives. The result was violence on the streets of Belfast, Derry and Carrickfergus. Loyalism flexed its violent muscles against the state to try and force renegotiations on the Northern Ireland protocol not politically but through political violence and paramilitary thugs.

Just a few days ago Arlene Foster against the wishes of many in her party abstained on a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly concerning a tabled motion in connection with banning conversion therapy. This is a therapy used by some to try and convince members of the LGBTQ not to embrace their sexuality.

The DUP has been shedding votes to the more liberal Unionist party Alliance and the more extreme Unionist party Traditional Ulster Voice. Her leadership, her decision-making, and her role in leading the party have been called into question. The Northern Ireland Protocol is, without doubt, the Genesis for her demise as loyalist and more right-wing members of the DUP seem to be literally calling the shots. On the 3rd of May, we witness celebrations for some and the condemnation of others of 100 years of the state of Northern Ireland being in existence. A Unionist State for a Unionist people.

Many within the Democratic Unionist Party want a return to the past. They want a return to Unionist, loyalist, Protestant domination of society in the north of Ireland. This is no longer an option as both demographics and times have changed and the DUP no longer holds the type of power within society that traditional unionism once had.

If a misogynistic, hard right, fully paid-up member of the Orange Order is elected to the position of leader of the Democratic Unionist party I believe this is another nail in the coffin of reactionary unionism.

The Democratic Unionist party only really exists to promote the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. With democrat change and a united Ireland drawing ever closer, the rationale for the existence of the DUP will soon fizzle out. Without the sectarian coat trilling, the sectarian sabre-rattling and a diminishing sectarian voter base, which has sustained the DUP from its Inception 50 years ago, it will become marginalized on the periphery of politics both regionally in the North and nationally on the island of Ireland.

I believe a more moderate unionism will come to the fore as we slowly progress towards National reunification. The writing on the wall will not say’ No Irish Sea Border or Forster must go’ The writing on the wall will be the new dispensation in a new Ireland for a new future for all.

Fra Hughes is a Freelance journalist-author-commentator-political activist.
Follow on Twitter @electfrahughes

100 Years And Not Out But Arlene Is!

Just because it’s ‘Goodbye Arlene’ doesn’t mean it will be the Merry Month of May for the DUP. Political commentator Dr John Coulter analyses the choices for the party - keep moving liberal, or lurch to the Right?

Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster’s shock announcement last week she is stepping down from both posts could leave the party facing difficult decisions in the coming days.

Viewed as a so-called moderniser within the DUP, her successor - or successors if the party decides to split both posts - could well decide the fate of the power-sharing Stormont Executive and ultimately devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Already Stormont Minister and Lagan Valley MLA Edwin Poots - viewed as the champion of the party’s founding fundamentalist wing - has announced his pitch for the leadership.

While he is seen as being from the Free Presbyterian Right-wing of the DUP, he is also viewed as a pragmatist when it comes to working with Sinn Fein in the Executive.

In Poots, the DUP would be combining the posts - leadership and First Minister - ensuring that a fifth columnist group does not emerge among MPs and peers at Westminster.

Likewise, if the looming debates over the Protocol and the Irish Language Act resulted in another collapse of Stormont, Poots would still have his leadership role as party boss to push his Unionist agenda.

Although Mrs Foster was first elected to the Assembly in 2003 for the border constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, that was as a member of the more liberal Ulster Unionist Party. She later defected to the DUP, becoming its leader in 2015.

Although elections to the Assembly have been put on hold until May 2022 because of the pandemic, it is the Northern Ireland Protocol - effectively creating a border in the Irish Sea - rather than Covid 19, which is being seen as the cause for the crisis within the DUP.

All eyes will now focus on who will be elected to the post of party leader and First Minister, or whether the DUP will decide to divide both posts and have a First Minister at Stormont from its Assembly team, while the party boss would come from either the Commons MPs or peers. With Poots’ hat in the ring for leadership, could a deputy leader to replace Lord Dodds - the former North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds - come from the Westminster team?

Mrs Foster was only the third person to lead the DUP since it was launched in 1971. Whoever takes over may be facing a poisoned chalice in terms of leading Unionism through the Protocol crisis.

Rather than an economic crisis, the Protocol is being seen by many in the pro-Union community, and especially among working class Protestant loyalists, as seriously undermining Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the UK in this the NI state’s centenary year.

During the Easter holidays, parts of Northern Ireland witnessed some of the most serious rioting as loyalists took to the streets to vent their anger against the Protocol, injuring almost 100 police officers.

Ironically, Mrs Foster found herself in almost a carbon copy politically as the same crisis which DUP founder - the late Rev Ian Paisley - found himself in when he was forced to stand down both as First Minister and as party leader.

Rev Paisley had in 2006 signed up to the St Andrews Agreement with Sinn Fein, which the following year ushered in one of the most stable periods of devolved government in Northern Ireland since the signing of the original Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

With the late Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein as his deputy, the partnership with Paisley in the Executive became known as ‘The Chuckle Brothers’, such was the political and personal rapport between the fundamentalist Christian firebrand preacher and the one time senior commander in the Provisional IRA.

However, the DUP has always, since its inception, had a Hard Right faction influenced by fundamentalist Christianity as Rev Paisley had also founded the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1951.

For years, the DUP played second fiddle politically to the rival Ulster Unionist Party, which had run Northern Ireland since the formation of the state in 1921. But in 2003 and 2005, the DUP ‘overtook’ the UUP in Assembly and Westminster elections respectively as the main political voice for Unionism.

Mrs Foster - given her UUP and Anglican background - was viewed as a liberalising influence within the DUP, especially as three past elections in Northern Ireland saw massive swings to the centre ground Alliance Party.

However, existing fundamentalists within the DUP fear that Mrs Foster’s middle of the road stance was taking the party further away politically from Rev Paisley’s founding ethos.

The success of Paisleyism in Unionism was that it gave a political voice to two previous muted sections of the pro-Union community - the loyalist working class and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.

There was also a fear among those two factions that Mrs Foster had been ‘wrong footed’ over the Protocol by Westminster and that the DUP will suffer as a consequence in any future elections, sparking more support for the Alliance Party, a revival in fortunes for the UUP, an increase in support for the more hardline party the Traditional Unionist Voice, or even the formation of yet another Unionist political movement.

A Poots leadership would clearly signal a move to the Right-wing to combat the TUV, while there have also been rumours of plans to create a new middle of the road pro-Union party to combat the drift of Unionist voters to Alliance.

Such rumours have rekindled the ghost of the old NI21 party formed by two liberal UUP MLAs - Basil McCrea of Lagan Valley and John McCallister of South Down. However, NI21 imploded politically before it had a realistic chance of establishing itself on the political map.

The coup against Mrs Foster’s leadership would appear to have been orchestrated by DUP activists loyal to the vision of the late Rev Paisley and modern day pragmatists who saw Mrs Foster personally as a potential political liability in any future elections.

If she was to be replaced as leader and First Minister, there is no guarantee her successor would enjoy a cordial relationship with Sinn Fein within the power-sharing Executive.

If the DUP was to elect a more hardline leader, for example, from the party’s fundamentalist wing, it could trigger a collapse of the Executive in protest at the Protocol.

Likewise, the DUP could elect a Westminster MP or peer as the next party boss, thereby transferring the power base of the party from Stormont to Westminster. Ironically, another Lagan Valley DUP elected representative, MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leads the field among the Commons team.

Another MP mooted for leadership is Gavin Robinson of East Belfast, but given that his main rival in the constituency is Alliance - not the UUP - it has been suggested Robinson is more politically liberal than Foster.

His election would signal the intention of the DUP to become a clearly liberal Unionist party with Alliance its main target as well as the centre ground of Northern Ireland politics.

Clearly, there is a significant section within the DUP’s panel of elected representatives who saw Mrs Foster as being politically unable either to combat the Protocol, or unite the party.

With Mrs Foster being forced to resign, the DUP will be forced to consider which is more important - saving Stormont and devolution, or saving unity within the party.

The ‘nuclear’ option is to collapse Stormont and avoid a potentially humiliating outcome in a May 2022 Assembly poll.

However, given Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnston’s Commons majority, the DUP does not enjoy the same clout in terms of a Westminster agreement as it did with Johnston’s predecessor, Theresa May, who relied heavily on DUP MPs to keep her Government in power.

The ultimate gamble for the DUP is that if it collapses Stormont, it may not get Direct Rule from Westminster as the alternative, but instead a form of joint authority between Dublin and London - a route that could place Northern Ireland on the road to Irish Unity.

It would be one of the great ironies of Irish politics if the DUP set in motion a chain of events which removed Northern Ireland from the Union itself. 

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. 

Save The Party Or Save Stormont? The Dilemma Facing The Democratic Unionists In Northern Ireland

Anthony McIntyre looks at yet another round of huffing and puffing in the Northern political Amphitheatre.  

Almost a year after his death, the ashes of Bobby Storey continue to smoulder from his burial place in Milltown Cemetery, with no shortage of politicians eager to fan them in the hope of igniting a political crisis. 

Storey’s funeral was always going to draw a large crowd, Covid or not. His republican detractors might not like it but he was a hugely popular and much revered figure within the Provisional Movement. Add to that the opportunity to stage-manage a big symbolic event, milk publicity and stamp the imprimatur of an IRA figure as senior as Storey onto Sinn Fein’s political project even though –  arguably because – it does not vaguely resemble anything for which Storey spent 20 years in jail.

The funeral was well organised from a Provisional perspective but not so from a public health one. It seemed to breach the government guidelines which Sinn Fein had helped promulgate: “at the time, regulations only permitted up to 30 people in a cortege and at a funeral service.” It was inevitable that a cacophony of voices would ensue, some authentic, others opportunistic, calling for action against the party.

The PSNI investigated 24 Sinn Fein members over their attendance at the event. The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) said it would not be prosecuting anyone and then switched track, promising  to review its decision. Although not too much should be read into that. It is unlikely to be the volte face many unionists hope for. 

Arlene Foster immediately called for Chief Constable Simon Byrne to resign, claiming his position had become untenable as he had lost the confidence of the unionist community. He told her politely but firmly to go fuck herself. As he should. 

Byrne defended both himself and his force's actions around the funeral by contending that the PSNI put Sinn Fein on notice that they would be in breach of Covid regulations if the funeral plan was to proceed as was. He further insisted that "nobody in the PSNI did a deal or looked the other way," Although the PPS rather than Byrne took the decision not to prosecute - he claimed to be surprised by it -  Foster’s beef with him is that the decision of the PPS not to pursue charges was in large part shaped by the PSNI having facilitated lawbreaking through its pre-funeral discussions with Sinn Fein.

The DUP is concerned at police facilitating lawbreaking when it comes to the management of funerals  but not when it is to assist homicide of the type perpetrated by the agent Stakeknife and numerous others. Carry on erasing the state tracks that lead to the deaths of many nationalists and the DUP will not say a word. Facilitate cortege, uproar. Facilitate cover-up, silence. 

Not to be dissuaded from her Herculean hypocrisy Foster threatened that "If Simon Byrne believes that he can dig in and stay, then we will have to look at other ways to deal with these issues." As Belfast has demonstrated in recent nights, the Children of Ulster have found other ways. Gerry Kelly, while certainly politicking, is not merely talking out his jacksie when making the observation that the violence is:

an out-working of the DUP's rhetoric ... By their words and actions they have sent a very dangerous message to young people in loyalist areas.
 
If Byrne does dig in, he will only be taking a page out of Foster's copybook from when she dug in and refused to resign over the much more scandalous matter of RHI. Byrne’s transgressions are juvenile by comparison. Why "it cannot continue as normal" for Byrne yet it did quite easily for her is something the DUP is seriously stretched to plausibly explain.

There is a certain message being emitted for those who want to hear it. When Byrne faces down Foster with her claims that unionism has no confidence in him, he is effectively telling her that it is not the confidence of unionism that the PSNI is prioritisng, but that of nationalism. The political tide is flowing, slowly albeit, in a particular direction and it is not towards London. The need to avoid upsetting Sinn Fein is underscored by the institutional response to the Bobby Storey funeral and how it differed to that in respect of the Francie McNally funeral two months earlier, in relation to which the PPS has decided to prosecute two republicans – Frankie Quinn and Brian Arthurs. Both men, if not critics of Sinn Fein, are certainly not on board with the party’s strategy.

The 1916 Societies ask a very pertinent question:

We note with particular interest the Director of public prosecutions Stephen Herron announcement that no charges will result from a much larger funeral in Belfast attended by many politicians. We state unequivocally that we do not believe anyone should be charged or prosecuted for burying their dead with respect and dignity, however the double standards applied cannot go unchallenged, the questions must be asked.
Why was this funeral and these two Republicans in particular selected for prosecutions?
Is the motivation behind these prosecutions political or in the interest of public health?

Short answer: political health.  

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Still Not The End Of The Storey

Sean Mallory focuses his ire on political rats and their parasitic pilgrims.

The Plague

In usual form Sean Mallory is not impressed by Arleen Foster nor Theresa May.

Would The Real Paul Merton Please Stand Up

Sean Mallory has few kind words for Arleen Foster.

Where Were You When?

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