The DUP is in danger of making itself irrelevant

The election of Edwin Poots as the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party was not in itself a bad decision, but it may make it harder for the party to recover from a series of bad decisions.

The most fundamental of those decisions was the DUP’s approach to Britain’s departure from the European Union. The Independent maintains that Brexit was the wrong decision for Northern Ireland as it was for the whole of the United Kingdom, but given that the DUP supported Brexit, it faced a choice about the way in which it was to be achieved.

Some senior members of the party accept privately that they made a mistake in rejecting Theresa May’s compromise, which would have kept the UK in the EU’s customs area. Notionally, this would have been temporary, until the negotiation of the trade treaty, but it could have been temporary for a long time, which was why the Clean-Breakers on the Conservative back benches did not like it.

However, it would have made the Irish border problems easier to manage, and it would have avoided the angst about putting a customs border “down the Irish Sea”, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

This is not to say that, had the DUP supported Ms May’s withdrawal agreement, it would have succeeded in passing the House of Commons (it was eventually defeated by a margin of 58 votes, and the DUP had only 10 seats). But it might have changed the chemistry, and it would at least have given the DUP a case to argue now.

Another bad decision was to overthrow Arlene Foster as party leader and first minister of Northern Ireland. She had her weaknesses as a leader, but she tried to lead the party towards more inclusive politics and more modern attitudes. The revolt of what she called the “misogynists and male chauvinists” suggests that the party has had enough of all that. Now the election of Mr Poots indicates that the DUP does indeed want to turn its back on the willingness to compromise that brought it to power, and that gave it the leading role as the voice of unionism in Northern Ireland.

The party is an unusual fiefdom, the personal creation of Ian Paisley Sr, built on his determination to say “No” and redeemed by his change of heart late in life that led to the formation of a devolved government in 2007. Its internal processes remain opaque, with the fate of the leader in the hands of MPs and Members of

the Legislative Assembly alone, meaning that Ms Foster was vulnerable to an Australian-style “spill” at any moment.

It is also unclear who will emerge as the new first minister, as Mr Poots ran for the party leadership on the basis that he would not also lead the government. This means the party could end up with three leaders: the first minister, Mr Poots and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the party’s group of MPs in the House of Commons. That does not seem to be a formula designed to provide clarity.

In the absence of clarity, symbols become more important. Too much emphasis has probably been given by the media to Mr Poots’s young-earth creationist Christian beliefs, but they suggest an inward-looking, traditionalist culture in the absence of a clear political project – and abolishing the Irish protocol of the UKEU withdrawal agreement is not that.

The DUP is in decline, and other voices are competing for the right to speak for unionism in Northern Ireland. The party’s choice of first minister to replace Ms Foster is now a make-or-break moment.