Analysis: Foster takes aim at Taoiseach in first DUP conference

Saturday was Arlene Foster’s first DUP annual conference as First Minister and party leader. So she had to grab the faithful at the start. Which she did.

At big conferences leaders must have other politicians to attack. She and Martin McGuinness are running the Northern Executive together, so having a lash at Sinn Féin would have appeared odd.

A mainstay in such circumstances is the Opposition. Which brought the leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party – Mike Nesbitt – and SDLP – Colum Eastwood – into the script.

If she and McGuinness were “Marlene”, then they were Steptoe and son. For younger viewers among the 400 or so delegates in the La Mon Hotel in east Belfast she explained who they were.

“One was an older bitter man,” she said, which would have been the UUP leader. “The other was a frustrated younger man” the SDLP leader, obviously.

“They had to live together, but they never got on. And they made a living selling junk to the public.”

A cracker, according to the delegates.

That was the comedy part of her act, the serious stuff was directed at Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Government, against whom she had a fair old rattle.

She accused the Government of trying to exploit Brexit to take investment jobs away from Northern Ireland. She said Dublin’s “representatives are sent out around the world to talk down our economy and to attempt to poach our investors”.

She was convinced that Irish politicians and civil servants were lobbying in the United States and elsewhere to redirect potential investment from the North to the Republic, or were seeking to persuade companies already based in Northern Ireland to shift south of the Border.

Brexit forum

Of course, had she agreed to participate in the Taoiseach’s Brexit forum she would have had an opportunity to make these charges directly.

Earlier in the week she told The Irish Times she liked Kenny but was unhappy he had tried to bounce her into attending his forum.

At the conference too, she said she was “pleased that relations with the Irish Government are probably as good as they have been at any point in our history and I will continue to work with them where it is in the best interests of Northern Ireland to do so”.

Still, her rebuke of Dublin over its alleged pilfering of Northern Ireland jobs was stinging. At a time when Dublin and Belfast need to find some way of managing the Brexit conundrum it is important that Foster and Kenny have a good working relationship.

The pair of them should be big enough not to let this sour how they do business but it demonstrates that on the economy and Brexit it’s dog eat dog.

On the other hand she had no need to attack Sinn Féin, which normally was a feature of DUP leaders’ speeches. She did not mention the party although, at a stretch, her comment that “the Executive is functioning better than at any stage since the restoration of devolution in 1999” could be interpreted as a compliment to her partner in government.

The attack on Dublin was the meatiest part of her speech. Otherwise it was a pretty bland conference script, if sufficiently alive to keep supporters amused and invigorated.

Same-sex marriage

She steered away from making direct comment about controversial subjects of the past week such as her insistence that the DUP would continue to oppose same-sex marriage.

On the periphery of the conference, however, she repeated that the party was welcoming of everybody, including implicitly those in the LGBT community. This was inherent in her speech, she said, where she commented: “I want a party that you can join if you share our vision for the union, not one which shuns people who cannot agree with every single policy.”

And neither did she overtly repeat her support for Ashers Baking Company, which lost its sex discrimination appeal over the “gay cake” case. But she addressed it obliquely when she said: “I’ve always known that the real wisdom in this country does not come from a small, self-appointed elite in society, but from people who are getting on with their lives, doing their jobs and raising their families.”

Apart from the sharp attack on Dublin there were no Halloween fireworks on Saturday. So, all in all a good first conference for Arlene Foster, despite the conference itself being a tame enough affair. Perhaps what was missing that the edge her predecessor Peter Robinson brought to these occasions. He was guest of honour at the DUP special dinner on Friday night but kept away from the conference on Saturday, leaving it to Foster to begin making her mark as leader in her own quiet, steely way.