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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.
Mr Poots is due to take over as party leader when the outgoing leader, Arlene Foster, steps down on Friday.
Ministerial team
The new leader is expected to announce his ministerial team, including who will take on the role of first minister, next week.
Mr Poots beat the Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson by 19 votes to 17 in what was the DUP’s first-ever leadership contest earlier this month.
The election was triggered by the resignation of Ms Foster after a majority of DUP Assembly members (MLAs) and MPs signed a letter of no confidence in her leadership.
The North Belfast MLA Ms Bradley was elected as deputy leader.
Ahead of the meeting of the DUP’s Executive, the Fermanagh and South Tyrone DUP Association issued a statement on social media expressing its “disgust” at the treatment of Ms Foster, its local Assembly member.
‘Strong message’
In a move indicative of the extent of divisions within the party following the coup against Ms Foster and the subsequent split over who should be the next leader, the association said it “was sending out a strong message” to Ms Foster. “This was not done in our name,” it said, adding that it would “stand firm by her side”.
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
As the DUP’s new leader, Mr Poots has pledged to heal internal divisions within the party as well as in wider unionism, and to take a tougher stance against the Northern Ireland protocol.
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”.