Arlene Foster’s successor must not risk the stability of the Good Friday Agreement

Until the swift and surgically precise excision of Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party had never before removed a party leader. Over much of its half-century existence, it was led by Ian Paisley, a man who could frighten the dogs when he was out canvassing, and who took the DUP from militant “No Surrender” protests into government, in partnership with ex-IRA man Martin McGuinness. Only someone with Mr Paisley’s presence – he once heckled the Pope in the European parliament with the cry “Antichrist!” – could carry that off.

When he retired, the mantle passed smoothly to his disciple, Peter Robinson, and in due course the coronet went equally peaceably to Ms Foster. As someone whose father, a policeman, was seriously injured by terrorists and who was herself bombed by the IRA on her school bus, where Catholics and Protestants sat separately, she had impeccable unionist credentials.

No longer, it would seem. A combination of factors forced her out, and they may be expected to frame the policies and attitudes of her successor. She was judged to have failed to stop or overturn the Northern Ireland protocol that led to an “economic United Ireland” in the view of her critics; she was taking too soft a line on issues such as equal LGBT+ marriage and other social issues; she was too accommodating towards Sinn Fein demands about use of the Irish language; and generally a bit too inclusive for the tastes of some.

The result of her triangulations – an inevitable consequence of power sharing – was a loss of support among working-class, socially conservative loyalists who have turned to the Traditional Ulster Group, and of moderates defecting to the cross-religion Alliance Party. At around 19 per cent in the opinion polls, Ms Foster and her unionists were on track to finish third in the next assembly elections in May 2022. The prospect of humiliation, and the continuing iniquities of the protocol (albeit presently suspended), made her position untenable.

It is not so very long ago that Northern Ireland was virtually a one-party statelet dominated by Protestantism, unionism, the Orange Order and a paramilitary police force. Maybe some in the DUP are nostalgic for those strutting bowler-hatted days.

If a successor such as the favourite, Edwin Poots, ends up chasing the loyalist core vote, then he (there are no female runners) will start to run serious risks with the peace process and the stability of the Good Friday Agreement. As minister of agriculture in the Northern Ireland executive, Mr Poots has already pointedly cancelled a routine meeting with his counterpart from Dublin. Presumably this was a gesture of defiance at Ireland and the EU’s continued insistence that the protocol be implemented according to the treaty obligations agreed to by the government in London (though not the one in Belfast).

If the other DUP ministers also boycott the “North-South” arrangements in the Good Friday Agreement then the outlook for it, and for the power-sharing executive, is bleak. Since the agreement was signed in 1998 the executive has spent lengthy periods in abeyance, and the lesson of recent history is that it doesn’t take much to collapse the executive but demands a Herculean effort to stand it up again. Sinn Fein has already made its displeasure with Mr Poots clear.

Such, then, is the unfortunate logic of Brexit. The border between the UK and the EU has to be put somewhere. If the DUP find it unacceptable for it to be between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as now, do they propose shifting it to the island of Ireland? Ms Foster’s answer to that was no, and she seemed always to think, rather like Boris Johnson, that the whole question could just be washed away by ignoring the protocol.

Evidently the EU doesn’t see things that way, and is unlikely to dilute its defence of the integrity of its single market. Brexit, after all, is why any of these issues arose in the first place, and it should not be forgotten that Northern Ireland, like Scotland, opted to remain in the EU in 2016.

The uncomfortable feeling is that the DUP will now try to make things so difficult for all concerned that the protocol has to be revisited. By refusing to cooperate with the new arrangements and, tacitly, countenancing law-breaking and intimidation by the emerging loyalist gangs, trade across the Irish Sea will eventually grind to a halt. The aim would be to make conditions on the ground at the port of Larne and elsewhere so unstable that it will force Dublin, Brussels and London to scrap or at least reform the protocol.

Some in Northern Ireland might quietly prefer a harder border with the Republic to their economic separation from the rest of the UK. They might even be willing to risk a return to republican terrorism. It certainly seems to be the way the wind is blowing in the six counties. The threat of a return to the Troubles unless the protocol is abolished is very real. You could call it the DUP’s project fear.