New DUP leader calls for unity in fight for Brexit protocol

Bloomberg

Edwin Poots, the newly elected leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), called on his supporters to fight against a Brexit deal that has angered unionists and given fresh impetus to calls for a united Ireland.
Poots’s victory over rival Jeffrey Donaldson by 19 votes to 17 comes ahead of an expected summer of heightened tension in Northern Ireland. The region saw the worst violence in years in April, in part fuelled by unionist discontent around the Brexit agreement’s so-called Northern Irish protocol. Poots will also have to contend with growing calls for a vote on whether the region should leave the UK and join the Irish Republic to the south.
“The Northern Ireland protocol has proven to be a massive challenge for us,” Poots said. “If we are to fight this, to ensure that everybody in Northern Ireland is not worse off as a consequence of the protocol, then it’s for us to do that together.”
The protocol effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the EU’s customs area and much of the single market. That means goods coming from mainland Britain need to be checked before or on entry to the region to ensure they meet the bloc’s rules and standards. Unionists see it as weakening ties to the UK while making business more difficult.
More than 70 police were injured in rioting last month which was at least partly fuelled by Brexit, and tensions remain. More protests are expected over the summer, especially if the protocol remains in its current form.
“To say unionism is in crisis is perfectly right,” Adrian Guelke, emeritus professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast, said. “Given the mood of the general unionist and loyalist public about the protocol it’s going to be a very rough ride indeed.”
Poots, 55, has long been known as a hard line opponent of the protocol, even though as agriculture minister he’s responsible for enforcing checks at Northern Ireland’s ports. During the leadership campaign he made clear he doesn’t plan to become first minister in Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly, unlike his predecessor Arlene Foster.
Another DUP lawmaker, Paul Givan, may be tapped for that role, according to the Belfast Telegraph, while Poots will be party leader.
Poots is steeped in the DUP. His father was a founding member of the party under Ian Paisley in 1971, while he himself joined in 1981. Poots has been a lawmaker for the party in the assembly since 1998.