Carla Lockhart’s decision highlights the internal tensions within the DUP

Throughout much of the Drumcree dispute, the loyalist activist and legal adviser to the Portadown Orange Order, Jamie Bryson, and the DUP MP for Upper Bann, Carla Lockhart, were side by side. During the stand-off over the controversial parade, and indeed since, Lockhart – on the ground with the local Orange Lodge at Drumcree – has struck a more strident note than her party colleagues at Stormont, not least her party leader, Gavin Robinson. Lockhart’s repeated call was that it could not be “business as usual” at Stormont. “People are angry that we have a self-proclaimed ‘First Minister for all’ in office who is currently under investigation for lawbreaking,” she told the BBC this week. “That lawbreaking has to have criminal sanctions, but also political consequences.”READ MOREThe First Minister, Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill, and party president Mary Lou McDonald were interviewed at a Belfast police station this week about their involvement in allegedly unlawful protests on the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road. These blocked the Orange Order – which had been granted permission by the Parades Commission – from marching from Drumcree church on September 27th. Other Sinn Féin politicians are due to attend police interviews today. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald and Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O'Neill at a community event in support of the Garvaghy Road residents. Photograph: Mark Marlow/PA Wire The political consequence Lockhart wanted was the withdrawal of her party colleague Emma Little-Pengelly as Deputy First Minister, which, under the powersharing rules governing Stormont, would also see O’Neill lose her position as First Minister. This has not happened and, as things stand, is not going to. Stormont looked to be on shaky ground at the outset of the Drumcree crisis, and there has been no shortage of acrimonious exchanges in the chamber since. But it is clear there is no appetite in the DUP for collapsing Stormont, not least because, with an Assembly election fast approaching, the party does not want to take the blame on the doorsteps. On this, Lockhart was at odds with the DUP’s leadership team, hence her decision, revealed by the Belfast Telegraph on Thursday night, to quit as a party officer. Rumours have long swirled about Lockhart’s possible defection to the Traditional Unionist Voice. Though she remains a DUP member and MP, this could be the first step towards such a move – or towards sitting as an independent unionist. That would be more dangerous for Robinson, though his position is secure as it stands, with the DUP’s senior leadership team clearly backing him over Lockhart. The loss of an MP would represent a serious blow to the party, taking it down to four Westminster seats, compared with Sinn Féin’s seven, and would inevitably raise questions about Robinson’s leadership. But Lockhart’s departure as a party officer has also illuminated the internal tensions always at work within the DUP: between grassroots opinion and the elected representatives at Stormont or Westminster; between the moderates and the harder right of the party; all against the backdrop of constant fear within the party of the TUV snapping at its heels. DUP leader Gavin Robinson's position is secure as it stands, with the party’s senior leadership backing him over Carla Lockhart. Photograph: Liam McBurney/Press Association That fear is never more profound than at election time. An Assembly election is due by May and it is clear there will be political consequences – to borrow Lockhart’s phrase – for unionism and nationalism. Unionism is already grappling with the fragmentation of the unionist vote, which this latest development has only served to underline. By contrast, Sinn Féin has been strengthened by what has been perceived within the nationalist community as taking a principled stand on a question of – to borrow from O’Neill this time – a matter of right and wrong. There is still much to happen between now and the election; what is clear is that it will all play out in the shadow of Drumcree.