The final straw
It tells you everything you need to know about the DUP that the straw that broke the camels back and ended Arlene Foster’s leadership was that she abstained on a vote to ban “gay conversion therapies” rather than voting against it. This is, don’t forget, a party whose founder used to campaign to “keep sodomy off the streets of Ulster.” It is a strange end to a political career that survived much bigger threats. Her leadership started with the “cash for ash” saga; a scandal that forced Martin McGuinness to resign on a point of principle. Martin McGuinness, I’ll just leave that there.
Mrs Foster then went on to back Brexit (suicidal from an Ulster Unionist viewpoint) and then Mrs May’s premiership. Which might have looked like the principled thing to do, if only the DUP hadn’t taken the opportunity to squeeze another £1 billion in extra spending for Northern Ireland in return. A deeply religious person she then shifted support to Boris Johnson, a man who brazenly and regularly breaks at least 2 of the ten commandments and has done so for decades. It should not have been a surprise that he duped her and dumped an even worse deal on Northern Ireland. A move that has done more damage to the Union than Mr McGuinness ever achieved, but apparently for the DUP even this was not enough to unseat Mrs Foster.
Still the battle is now on to succeed her, with Edwin Poots the front runner. A man who sounds like a minor character from The diary of a Nobody and whose views on creationism and the age of the earth would have stretched the incredulity of a Victorian bishop. Maybe it is just as well the government doesn’t need the DUP’s votes anymore.
https://jonty.substack.com/