N Ireland's main British unionist party to choose new leader
LONDON (AP) — Northern Ireland’s largest British unionist party was choosing a new leader Friday, in a contest with two candidates and only 36 voters.
The Democratic Unionist Party, senior partner in Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government, was choosing a replacement for Arlene Foster, who quit as leader and first minister last month amid recriminations over the impact of Brexit.
Only the party’s eight lawmakers in the British Parliament and 26 Northern Ireland Assembly members can vote in the contest between Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots and lawmaker Jeffrey Donaldson. The result is due late Friday afternoon.
A party rooted in the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church, the DUP opposed Northern Ireland’s 1999 peace accord, but later became reconciled to it and agreed to share power with the Irish Republican Army-linked party Sinn Fein.
The power-sharing relationship has often been rocky, and the Belfast administration was suspended for almost three years from 2017 after it collapsed over a botched green energy project.
Britain’s economic split from the European Union at the end of 2020 has further shaken the political balance in Northern Ireland, a part of the U.K. where some people identify as British and some as Irish.
Post-Brexit trade rules have imposed customs and border checks on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. The arrangement was designed to avoid checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an EU member, because an open Irish border has helped underpin the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.
The new arrangements have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say the new checks amount to a border in the Irish Sea, weaken ties with the rest of...
