Cost of leadership may have made decision personal

At the DUP annual conference in November a senior party figure, when asked did he think Nigel Dodds would take the leadership or might he funk it, rather uncharacteristically said, “It’s time for Nigel to pee or get off the pot.”

Yesterday evening – to the great surprise of many, including the majority in his own party – he got off the pot.

The question was posed in the context of how in 2009 the North Belfast MP also caused surprise when he gave up the plum job of finance minister in the Northern Executive to concentrate on his Westminster work.

At that same conference when one of outgoing DUP leader Peter Robinson’s kitchen cabinet was asked did he have any concerns that Dodds might throw up this chance, the source pooh-poohed such a notion.

He was confident the “dream team” succession would happen: Dodds would rule as leader from Westminster while the current Minister of Finance Arlene Foster would be installed as First Minister.

This announcement by Dodds will have shocked Robinson and the rest of the DUP leadership. No doubt he told them sometime before his announcement last night, but whenever Robinson and senior colleagues were informed, they would have been disappointed and taken aback.

This provides a huge opportunity for Foster to become both First Minister and leader, although there is no guarantee she will be the only candidate for the leader’s post. East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson or North Antrim MP Ian Paisley may seek the leadership. Lagan Valley MLA Edwin Poots could yet throw his hat into the ring.

Dodds has given his backing to Foster and the feeling within the DUP hierarchy last night was she will be appointed as leader and will also assume the position of First Minister.

Foster would represent what would be viewed as the modernist and, relatively speaking, more liberal wing of the party. One potential candidate is Poots, who is from the more fundamentalist side of the DUP and who in the recent past has had differences with Robinson.

‘Realistic challenge’

A problem for Poots, however, according to one source, is that he is due to fly to Papua New Guinea this week for the wedding of his son, a missionary. “From a standing start it might be difficult for Edwin in such circumstances to mount a realistic challenge to Arlene,” the source said.

The same source felt Paisley would only contest the leadership if he felt he had a good chance of winning. He was less sure what Wilson might do.

Paisley and Wilson could not be contacted last night.

The DUP plans to press on with the selection and election. Nominations close tomorrow while the parliamentary party of MEP, MPs and MLAs meet on Thursday of next week to elect the leader. It will be for the 90-100 member DUP ruling executive to endorse or reject that choice.

There is always the possibility, of course, that anyone seeking to challenge Foster might seek to postpone the election so that they could mount a campaign. What happens next will become clear very soon.

The past couple of weeks must have been very testing for Dodds, involving heart-searching and a DUP man’s dark night of the soul. Indeed, it would have taken courage for him to reach his decision.

He said he was not standing because he did not believe it was possible to be a leader from Westminster. But that is a problem that could have been surmounted. Someone could have been asked to resign from the Assembly and Dodds could have been co-opted to the Assembly if necessary.

It seems his reason is more personal than political. Maybe observing the cost of leadership was a decider. Maybe learning from Robinson how his life was down to a few hours sleep a night, a bad diet, no exercise and poor family life was the persuader.

Gruelling lifestyle

Dodds would have been very conscious that such a gruelling lifestyle almost certainly was the reason that Robinson suffered a heart attack in May.

Dodds has had his own health scare. In April 2013 , he became ill at Westminster. His MEP wife Diane had to rush from Brussels to be at his hospital bedside. He recovered from that but two months later he was knocked unconscious on the evening of the Twelfth of July when standing near the police lines blocking Orangemen from parading on past the Ardoyne shops.

Maybe those experiences instructed Dodds that enough sacrifices have been made for the DUP cause; perhaps it was better to settle for the quieter life of deputy leader in the more refined setting of the House of Commons.

It shows a lack of political ambition but equally Dodds could argue that it also shows a surfeit of good Ulster common sense. It means the man can have a life.

It could be too that Dodds has figured what are the important things to consider. He and his wife have a son and a daughter and one grandchild.

They had a third son, Andrew, who died from spina bifida. It will be remembered how in 1996 the IRA wounded an RUC officer who was protecting Dodds as he and his wife visited Andrew at the Royal Victoria Hospital in west Belfast.

Maybe that experience and all the other experiences after arduous decades in the public sphere taught him that there is more to life than politics.