The election of Edwin Poots as the new DUP leader has been formally ratified by the party’s Executive.
The North’s Minister for Agriculture was confirmed as the party leader at a meeting on Thursday evening in Belfast of the party’s 130-strong Executive, which is made up of representatives from the party’s constituency associations as well as its Assembly members, MPs and members of the House of Lords.
Mr Poots and the incoming deputy leader, Paula Bradley, were the last to arrive for the meeting at a south Belfast hotel, where they greeted well-wishers holding union flags before entering together.
The BBC reported on Thursday night that a vote over whether to hold the ratification by secret ballot was defeated by 56 votes to 47, and Mr Poots was then ratified by 72 to 28 in a public vote.
Resigning
Paul Bell, an executive member of the DUP’s association in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, said afterwards that he was resigning from the party because of the way the outgoing leader, Arlene Foster, had been treated.
“The problem was with those number of MLAs and MPs that decided to go behind our back, to sign letters of confidence ... that is where the problem is.
“It’s not the process of electing a new leader. It’s the fact that we’ve got 28 elected members in the Assembly and Westminster who would actually create a coup and publicly assassinate our leader,” he said.
Mr Bell told the media the votes shed by the DUP at the next election would be in their “tens of thousands”, warning that “people in Fermanagh and South Tyrone will vote for anybody but the DUP.”
The meeting revealed the extent of the divisions within the DUP, with the outgoing leader Arlene Foster as well other senior figures including the MPs Jeffrey Donaldson, Gavin Robinson, Diane Dodds and Gregory Campbell leaving before Mr Poots made his inaugural speech as leader.
Pretty brutal
In an interview with the BBC’s Newcast podcast on Thursday evening, Ms Foster said her removal as party leader had been “brutal” and questioned whether it should have been done in such a fashion.
“Even by DUP standards it was pretty brutal, in terms of what happened,” the outgoing DUP leader said. “I had absolutely no idea and was telephoned by a close colleague that this was happening on Monday evening and then by Tuesday morning, it was all in the papers.
“So, no, it wasn’t particularly pleasant. There was, of course, another way of doing it. But colleagues decided to go down a different route,” she said.
On the Northern Ireland protocol, Ms Foster said that she was “really quite concerned” about the damage caused to the Belfast Agreement “moving into the summer months”.
Libel victory
In the podcast she reacted to her court victory on Thursday. The TV presenter Dr Christian Jessen was ordered to pay her damages of £125,000 for an “outrageous” defamatory tweet he posted which made unfounded claims that the First Minister was having an extramarital affair.
She said it “turns out actually you can’t say what you like on Twitter and get away with it, and I think if the case today sends that message then I’m very happy about that.”
Ms Foster said it was important that if abuse was coming from anonymous accounts “people can be challenged around it” and said fighting online trolls was “certainly part of what I want to do, not just for myself - because I’ll no longer be a public figure in that respect - but actually for ordinary young people and for women who find themselves attacked just because they’re different from how people want them to be.
“I think that’s wrong. Look everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but what they’re not entitled to is to cause harm to people and I think that’s really important to say,” she said.
Heal internal division
In his speech to the DUP’s Executive immediately following his ratification as party leader, Mr Poots appealed for unionist unity and pledged to “rebuild, reunite and reinvigorate our party, unionism, and our great wee country.”
He paid tribute to Ms Foster, saying he knew recent weeks had been “difficult for her”, but said that “no matter what background or place we come from, Arlene is and will be regarded as one of the most foremost women and unionists in British politics.”
He also committed to continue the party’s campaign against the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that the party would “consistently roll back the objectional provisions of the protocol, as we have been doing.
“That involves arguing our case forcefully and with conviction,” he said. “It involves making Brussels and Dublin aware that the protocol is intolerable and unworkable.
“Legal challenges are one correct tactic, but the guaranteed way of reading our sales of the divisive protocol is through the Assembly.
“We will employ political tactics to continue the pressure, and let Dublin see that isn’t some hiccup, but rather something that has the worrying capacity to destabilise relationships that they have gained most from.”
The new leader is expected to announce his ministerial team, including who will take on the role of first minister, next week.
Also ratified
Meanwhile, members of the Ulster Unionist Party met virtually on Thursday evening to ratify the Upper Bann Assembly member Doug Beattie as their new party leader.
Mr Beattie was the only candidate to put his name forward for the leadership after the outgoing leader, Steve Aiken, stood down earlier this month.
In a statement, the UUP chairman, Danny Kennedy, said the party had unanimously ratified Mr Beattie as the party leader, which took place “at the conclusion of a very positive meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council this evening”.
