Is DUP set to dump Arlene as leader?

THERESA MAY is not the only leader facing an uncertain future – the position of the DUP’s Arlene Foster is increasingly being questioned by her ten-strong political party.

Without a Commons seat, Mrs Foster is absent from the gossip and intrigue of Westminster; and since the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended last year over a power-sharing dispute with Sinn Fein, she has also lacked a power base in the province.

Last week’s threat by her party to vote down the Budget, over fears that the EU will recommend keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union and impose a border down the Irish Sea, led to cold fury inside No 10.

The warnings issued to Mrs May about the DUP’s ‘red lines’ on Brexit are designed to signal Mrs Foster’s tough leadership qualities to her members – but Nigel Dodds, the party’s Commons leader, is increasingly being talked up as her replacement.

A source said: ‘The DUP is not the easiest party to lead – MPs like Dodds and Jeffrey Donaldson are always at each other’s throats.

‘But it is even harder when she is not based in Westminster. Her grip on the leadership means she has to be unyielding on her red lines or risk being toppled herself.’

Despite holding the fate of the Government in her hands, Mrs Foster remains an enigma to most voters outside Northern Ireland who know little of her traumatic childhood.

Aged just eight, she suffered the horror of witnessing her father’s shooting at the hands of the IRA and, when she was 16, Republicans bombed the school bus she was travelling on.