Edwin Poots to consult with the DUP over first minister

The next Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Edwin Poots has indicated he will consult with the party about whether Arlene Foster should stand down as first minister earlier than her intended departure date.

Mrs Foster said she would stay on as first minister until the end of June.

Mr Poots said he was keen to ensure a smooth transition.

In an interview with the Sunday Life newspaper, he confirmed he would not take the first minister post himself.

Mr Poots added that party members could also judge whether he is the "right man to stay" in his current role as agriculture minister, or whether he should take on a different brief or leave ministerial office.

"I want our party to be a party that is healing and fit for purpose going forward. Therefore, I will deal with things as gently as I possibly can but also practically going forward," he told the newspaper.

"I will ascertain those views over the next few days."

Among those tipped as possible successors as first minister are DUP MLAs Mervyn Storey, Paul Givan, Paul Frew and the party's new deputy leader Paula Bradley.

On Friday, Mr Poots defeated his Lagan Valley constituency colleague Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP in the DUP's first contested leadership election in its 50-year history.

Mr Poots said advice from colleagues will be "critical" to determining any changes to the DUP's ministerial team.

He explained that by rejecting the role of first minister, which has been held by previous DUP leaders, whoever occupies it instead can focus on "leading the country and dealing with the machinations of government".

"The leader of unionism can focus on reinvigorating unionism," he continued.

"This is absolutely critical now".

With an assembly election a year away in 2022, Mr Poots said he planned to speak with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) about ways to maximise the unionist vote.

He described the possibility of Sinn Féin becoming Stormont's largest party and nominating a first minister as "destabilising" and "something a lot of people would find hard to swallow".

The potential for a Sinn Féin justice minister "would create problems", he added, "given the history of Sinn Féin and where they have come from and the attitude they had during the Troubles towards IRA violence".

Mr Poots said he wants unionist parties to cooperate to find a "solution" to the issues arising from the Northern Ireland Protocol, an element of the UK-EU Brexit deal which has led to disruption and additional checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland.

The DUP leader designate said he has requested to meet the prime minister and NI Secretary Brandon Lewis to discuss the issues and will "certainly be ramping things" in expressing his opposition to the protocol.

"I have been working with a senior UK lawyer who is advising us on what steps we can take in terms of judicial remedies," he said.

"If there isn't real significant political progress made in the coming weeks, I would imagine we would be launching judicial proceedings in the not too distant future."

Mr Poots re-stated that he would not be attending North-South Ministerial Council meetings until there was a resolution.

He accused the Irish government of having "hugely damaged north-south relations in their conduct over the protocol, the demands they have made and the aggressive nature".

DUP MLA Christopher Stalford, who supported Mr Poots' leadership campaign, told Sunday Politics that all unionist parties agree "the protocol has to go".

"The provision in the law says if 45 members of the assembly vote to remove the protocol then it will go and that is where I think that we do need to see, I don't want to talk about pacts, or stuff like that, but we do need to see a degree of cooperation across the broad unionist family in order to ensure that 45 unionists are elected to Stormont in the next assembly election."

However, Doug Beattie, currently the only candidate for the UUP leadership, accused the DUP of "not being honest with the electorate" on efforts to scrap the protocol.

Mr Beattie told Sunday Politics the assembly cannot vote to end the protocol if unionists return with 45 MLAs, rather, only articles five to ten can be replaced.

"We have to start this off by being as honest as we possibly can," he said.

"We want rid of the protocol, but we have worked really hard to try and put in alternatives and mitigations to get rid of that protocol, but what we will not be doing is telling people an untruth to garner support."