The end of Edwin Poots’s 21-day spell as leader of the DUP sums up the ordeal of being a unionist leader. Elected as a hard-line replacement for Arlene Foster, he has departed now after being seen to have given too much away to Sinn Fein over the Irish language.
Who will replace him? The early candidate appears to be Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the party’s Westminster leader who was defeated by Poots in last month’s contest. His supporters are championing him as a stabilising influence in a party which has ripped itself apart, with others suggesting that he should be elected without a contest.
Poots’s election was a last roll of the dice for his wing of the party, the fundamentalists who didn’t really get over the departure of Ian Paisley in 2008. Yet even the good reverend doctor was able to appeal to all branches of the DUP and unionism more broadly.
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