Analysis: Foster’s successor won’t have it easy but surely can’t make things any worse

While the DUP leader was no stranger to controversy even before Brexit, it is her disastrous handling of that issue that will dominate her legacy

Arlene Foster has announced she will resign as leader of the DUP and as Northern Ireland’s First Minister. Picture: Getty

As leadership coups go, it was as swift as it was brutal.

At the start of this week no-one outside of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) plotters had suspected that Arlene Foster’s leadership was in imminent danger.

By Tuesday evening, more than 20 of the party’s 28 MLAs and four of its eight Westminster MPs had signed letters calling for her resignation in a move that was so decisive it left the Fermanagh woman with ...