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Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Fusife and Dennis Staunton, the London editor of the Irish Times. This week, Arlene Foster handed in her resignation as DEP leader and an election is underway. This comes after increasing concern on both sides over the Northern Island Protocol between the UK and the EU. James, when it comes to Northern Ireland, it seems

as though the situation is getting worse and worse from the Unionist perspective. What's going on?

So I think Arlene Foster has essentially been undone by unionist anger at the protocol.

Ever since the protocol came in, you've seen DUP support falling. There was a lucid talk poll, which I think freaked the party out, which showed them down to

19%. The TUV, the more hardline party, up to 10%. And I think Arlene Foster has essentially been

removed in the hope that a new leader can appeal to more hardline unionist voters.

But I think this is not a simple equation because if you, for example, one of the people talked about as a potential success to Arlene Foster is Gavin Robinson, the MP for East Belfast.

His seat is in danger not to the TUV but to the Alliance Party. And I think

if a DUP goes back to, you know, more explicitly evangelical Protestant party, more hard line,

then I think it will run into electoral trouble. I think if it majors on its social

conservatism, one of the immediate triggers for

Arlene Foster's removal was that she abstained in a vote in a ban on gay conversion therapy, while

most of her MLAs were opposed to the ban outright. Then I think the DUP will lose more support and

compound some of the union's generational difficulties.

And I think the other factor to worry about here is next year's storm on elections,

I think could be very destabilising for Norman Ireland in two ways.

First of all, the concession that Boris Johnson extracted from the EU

was that the Assembly can remove the protocol by a simple majority

vote. Normally there are kind of break provisions so that both communities have to be happy

...