Opening UP - Village Magazine

November 2020 37

HERE ARE now public disareements

in the DUP. That marks a siniﬁcant

chane in Northern politics.

Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots

has dissented from the Executive’s

lockdown regulations.

Poots made sectarian comments about the

areas where Coronavirus is strongest but it is,

as often, simplistic to concentrate on the sub

stance of what this anti-Evolution demagogue

said. Mainly, he was beginning his leadership

bid against Arlene Foster.

The DUP has always been a centralised and

disciplined party. Disagreements were kept be

hind closed doors.

In July, there was unprecedented dissension

in the Assembly. Eleven of the 27 DUP Assem

bly members voted against the Executive Com-

mittee (Functions) Act.

The Act seemed minor. It was presented as

‘tidying up’. In reality it gave ministers power

to act autonomously, without having to take

decisions to the full Executive for agreement. It

was given accelerated passage through the As

sembly, being put to the vote only 25 days after

publication.

The Executive supported it. The DUP Junior

Minister at the Executive Oce, the oce of the

First and Deputy First Minister, Gordon Lyons,

moved it in the Assembly.

Senior Westminster ﬁgures in the DUP, in

cluding Sammy Wilson, Nigel Dodds and Jerey

Donaldson, opposed it. Some Unionists fear

the Act removes their vetoes from controversial

decisions by Nationalist ministers. Environ

mental and planning campaigners also fear it

enables controversial decisions to be rammed

through favouring vested interests.

The Act passed. There was no punishment for

the rebels.

Increasingly Wilson, MP for East Antrim, has

been openly defying Arlene Foster.

He publicly contradicted her on the EU With

drawal Act.

When the Act went through Westminster, Fos

ter told Sky News: “I have to recognise that that

Opening UP

By Anton McCabe

Poots shoots but the DUP is modernising and encountering dissent

is the reality now”.

She said she had to recognise that the proto

col “is the reality now”.

Wilson repeated his criticism of the deal,

saying it “must be scrapped or at the very least,

signiﬁcantly changed”. The BBC commented:

“However, the vehemence with which he has

reiterated his view invites comparison with the

apparently more relaxed approach taken by his

party leader in a recent Sky News interview”.

Subsequently Wilson alleged Foster had

over-ruled Health Minister Robin Swann, who

had wanted to impose stricter restrictions to

combat the Covid-19 epidemic. Junior Minister

Lyons, aged 34 who spent ﬁve years as Wilson’s

assistant, went on Radio Ulster to contradict his

former boss.

Wilson has sniped against mask-wearing. He

tweeted a picture of himself not wearing a mask

in an ice-cream shop with the caption “You

can’t eat (ice cream) when you’re muzzled”.

This came under immediate ﬁre on Twitter

from DUP Assembly member Pam Cameron and

former MP Emma Little Pengelly. Little Pengelly

is a SPAD (Special Advisor) to Foster. Pengelly

replied to Wilson: “Do you know what’s worse

than wearing a mask? It is being in intensive

care on a ventilator or not able to breathe”.

Wilson was then pictured on the Under

ground in London not wearing mask, contrary to

the law. Former DUP Assembly Member Jimmy

Spratt went on Radio Ulster and said Wilson

had to be responsible. “I am absolutely furi

ous because it’s not the ﬁrst time he has done

a stunt”, Spratt said. Spratt is a safe pair of

hands, former Chair of the North’s Police Fed

eration and active in his Presbyterian Church.

However, Foster is not strong enough to deal

with Wilson. She is perceived as an increasingly

weak leader, damaged by the Renewable Heat

Incentive scandal. That is why Poots is making

the bid.

There are clearly divergent forces in the DUP,

pulling the party in fundamentally dierent

directions. There is an ‘old DUP’, linked to the

Free Presbyterian Church and religious funda

mentalism, and a more secular, modernising

wing.

The religious conservatives are slipping, but

still very well represented. Some of them are

shifting, though, such as Mervyn Storey an MLA

and former Minister from North Antrim. In an in

terview with economist Paul Gosling, he said: “I

am anti-abortion and pro-traditional marriage,

but I must recognise that others in my commu

nity have dierent views from me in this”. In

the same interview he said: “We are not living

in the 1960s. There will be change”.

The DUP originated in opposition to the mild

O’Neill reforms of the late 1960s. The DUP has

reinvented itself as a party of power-sharing. Is

Young Earth Creationism, or openness, next?

There is an ‘old

DUP’, linked to the

Free Presbyterian

Church and

religious

fundamentalism,

and a more secular,

modernising wing.

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