Arlene Foster: The rise and fall of leader turned on by her party at the end

Mrs. Foster herself topped the vote in Fermanagh South Tyrone and the strong showing was an early validation of her leadership.

Her support sent out a strong message as the DUP remained Stormont’s largest party, with Mrs. Foster becoming the first female First Minister.

However, it was to be a relatively short lived success, with political storm clouds of a type forever familiar in Northern Ireland gathering on the horizon.

In 2017, rumbles of a political storm swept in as the power-sharing Executive collapsed when Sinn Féin walked out in protest at the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal, that happened under Mrs. Foster’s watch as the then Department of Trade, Enterprise and Investment (DETI) Minister.

With the collapse came nationwide criticism, another election, and all the positivity of 2016 was wiped out.

Despite the party’s strong showing in the 2016 Assembly election, that sunny political outlook was wiped out in less than a year of power-sharing at Stormont under Mrs. Foster as First Minister.

Chilly relations

It was not until January, 2020 with the New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) agreement that Stormont was back in business, after years of often chilly relations with Sinn Fein and other political critics and rivals.

But then along came the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and much of the party and broader political agenda became focused on fighting the virus.

Prior to that, the DUP had retained the largest party tag but lost 10 seats and now had only one seat more than Sinn Féin. Unionism also lost its majority in Stormont for the first time.

With Brexit continuing to rumble on, Mrs. Foster’s party had returned 10 DUP MPs to the House of Commons, putting the party in a sphere of influence with the ruling Conservative party, that had lost its overall majority.

Mrs. Foster and her colleagues brokered a £1bn confidence and supply agreement for Northern Ireland with then Prime Minister, Teresa May – an arrangement that proved mutually advantageous for the DUP and Mrs. May alike at the time, but her own political ousting to Boris Johnson, and changing fortunes in Westminister, would severely drain away the DUP’s importance to the British government.

The subsequent difficulties with implementing Brexit, changing political tides in Westminister, and Covid-19 pandemic crisis, would all muddy the political waters still further in Northern Ireland, further impacting on the DUP party’s agendas and Mrs. Foster’s leadership.

During her five and a half years as DUP leader, Mrs. Foster has been fighting battles on various fronts – none more so than Brexit.

The DUP firmly nailed their colours to the Brexit mast in 2016 – a move that is still having major ramifications for the party today, some five years on.

First, the party had issues with the Withdrawal Agreement. Then the backstop. Now, the Northern Ireland Protocol.

While she initially supported the protocol, saying it would give Northern Ireland the best of both worlds, Mrs. Foster has had to change tack, and in the end, she called for it to be scrapped, facing pressure coming from all aspects of Unionism and Loyalism, although domestic and international political and economic pundits have queried what the party proposes as an alternative arrangement.

Since her defection from the UUP in 2004, Mrs. Foster has held several ministerial positions, including with the Environment and Finance portfolios, on her way to becoming the first female leader of the DUP.

Various reports over the past week have pointed to her abstention on the motion to ban so-called internationally discredited ‘gay conversion therapy’ as the straw that broke the camel’s back for the party.

Alongside the handling of the NI Protocol, the DUP was facing strong criticism from all angles.

With an election scheduled for 2022, some in the party thought now was the time to restructure, or possibly face the worst results in the party’s history.

A high-level rebellion

In a flurry of activity, a high-level rebellion saw many in the party leadership unite to voice their lack of confidence in Mrs. Foster’s continued leadership, forcing her hand.

A week has now passed since Mrs. Foster announced her decision to stand down as party leader and First Minister.

In her home constituency, her supporters will be feeling the sense of loss more acutely than anywhere else, where she was widely respected as a hard-working, moderate and focused politician, dedicated to her home area as well as national interests.

Many in her home area continue to regard Mrs. Foster as a hardworking politician, regarding her as a staunch voice for her constituents since being first elected in 2003.

Just recently, she worked with Education Minister, Peter Weir, to find additional funding for a scheme which enabled Newtownbutler Playgroup to keep one of its programmes running – just one of a number of local projects that she was interested to support, if she could.

Since the announcement of her imminent stepping down as party leader, she has thanked the hundreds of people who have got in touch with messages and gifts.

What Mrs. Foster does next will come out in due course, whether it will be a peerage in the House of Lords, or indeed, whether she will step away from politics entirely, this decision will lie solely on her shoulders, with many people across the island of Ireland and much farther afield keen to see what she does next.