By their friends shall ye know them: Donald Trump and the Democratic Unionist Party’s populist revival

ABSTRACT

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was home to some of the most vocal and steadfast supporters of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, including interviews with those supporters, this paper accounts for the good relations between the DUP and Trump. That account highlights several commonalities, including their ‘Orangeism’, their stance on Brexit, their illiberalism, and their populism. As well as its nature, we also assess Trump’s impact on the behaviour and development of the DUP. We show how the Trump presidency fuelled a populist revival within the party, providing in the process an important update to existing accounts of its modernisation journey. That revival, we conclude, encourages greater cognisance of the DUP’s populist credentials and ongoing scrutiny of the factional tensions within it, tied as those are to the prospects of political unionism.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratic unionist party
• Donald Trump
• populism
• unionism
• modernisation
• brexit

1. Introduction

In the UK case, some of the most loyal and vocal supporters of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and political platform were to be found in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Such support was perhaps best encapsulated in a photograph of three DUP MPs, circulated widely on social media, posing with a ‘Trump 2020: Keep America Great’ flag outside Westminster, in the run-up to that year’s US Presidential election.¹ That this stunt was met with a mixture of derision and bemusement from across the political spectrum neatly demonstrates the extent to which open support for Trump in the UK was, by that stage of his presidency, a niche pursuit.² Any warm words for Trump, beyond diplomatic necessities, were largely confined to the hard-right fringes of the Conservative Party, primarily members of the European Research Group, and a section of the DUP’s parliamentary wing.³ That one of the flag-bearers, Ian Paisley Jr, also boasted an unofficial personal line to the US President and was welcomed into his private court on occasion, stokes the sense of extraordinariness surrounding the relationship between Trump, his movement, and his DUP supporters. The respect, it appears, was mutual and the connection one of substance.

This paper provides an original assessment of the nature and significance of the good relations between Donald Trump and an element within the DUP. In a first step, we ask: why were they such close political bedfellows? Why was the DUP home to some of the most fervent cheerleaders for the Trump presidency? The explanation we provide is multi-faceted, comprised of a blend of personal, strategic, political, and ideological factors. The presentation of these factors forms the bulk of the paper, and they are grouped under four headings which capture certain shared qualities between Trump and his DUP supporters.

First, we highlight the perceived diplomatic coup of a US President (and administration) accessible and amenable to unionists generally, and the DUP specifically, to an unprecedented degree. Second, Trump’s Brexit-leaning tendencies are shown to have conditioned the support of those within the DUP, as did the spectre of a Biden presidency which threatened to reset the White House to its traditional ‘pro-Irish, pro-EU’ setting, and in doing so weaken the DUP’s diplomatic leverage in Washington. Third, we address the mutual illiberalism of Trump and the DUP, a product of their respective relationships with the Christian evangelical movement and reflecting the long-standing historical connection between Paisleyism and the US Christian Right.

Finally – and most substantively – we account for the shared populist outlook and approach of the DUP and Trump. Cas Mudde, in their seminal study of the populist radical right (PRR) in Europe, saw it fit to include the DUP in that new party family, assigning it to the category of ‘unusual suspects’ (2007: 53). That category, as they explained, included: ‘political parties not normally associated with the populist radical right, or that do not feature commonly with usual suspects in the literature but that do hold a populist radical right core ideology’. In other words, the DUP was a PRR outfit typically not recognised as such. The absence of Mudde’s designation in subsequent treatments of the party suggests that its PRR credentials have remained under-appreciated. Whilst the general label of ‘populist’ has been readily applied to the DUP, engagement with its populism, beyond some basic component parts, has not been a key concern of existing studies, and so our understanding of it as a populist actor remains largely superficial.⁴ Likewise, any similarities between the DUP and other PRR parties, movements, and leaders have also escaped any in-depth scrutiny. Through careful engagement with existing research on the PRR, and the concepts of ‘ethno-nationalist populism’ (Bonikowski, 2017) and ‘bad manners’ (Moffitt, 2016) more specifically, this paper highlights the commonalities of Trump, his ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, and the DUP’s brand of ethnic unionism. In doing so, DUP support for the Trump presidency can be better understood.

Upon examining the nature of the connection between the DUP and Trump, the paper then moves to assess its significance in terms of the party’s behaviour, development, and internal dynamic. What, in other words, does it reveal about the modern DUP? Addressing that question, we chart the fortunes of the DUP’s principal competing factions – its Paisleyite ‘populists’ and Robinsonian ‘tacticians’ – highlighting how the former enjoyed a revival following the Brexit referendum and during the Trump years. Whilst there have been several recent attempts to explain the actions of the DUP during the Brexit era, none have examined the Trump factor in any depth (see Murphy & Evershed, 2020a; 2020b; 2022). That, we assert, is an important oversight due to Trump’s influence on the party’s strategy and behaviour during the Brexit withdrawal process, stiffening the resolve of its resurgent populists and fuelling their aversion to compromise. Indeed, that populist revival necessitates an update of the general tale of the DUP’s modernisation ‘journey’. ‘Modernisation’ being shorthand here for replacing a populist ethnic brand of unionism – the DUP’s traditional fare – with a more inclusive and civic-minded offering. The most recent in-depth examination of that process and issue, Tonge et al.'s 2014 study, The Democratic Unionist Party: from protest to power, predates both Brexit and the Trump presidency – key influences on the party’s trajectory and disposition. Importantly, in providing that update this paper also contributes to ongoing debates concerning the complexion and direction of political unionism more generally. The struggle for supremacy between the DUP’s populists and modernisers has clear and important implications for unionism’s capacity to cultivate and advance a civic platform which, for some, is necessary to arrest the community’s political decline and so preserve Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom (see, for example, Edwards, 2023; Kane, 2023; McBride, 2023).

2. Methodology

Exploring the good relations between the DUP and Trump is essentially an exercise in interpretation. To facilitate this, we adopted a mixed-method research strategy, combining a range of qualitative data sources. These included: news media coverage, parliamentary proceedings (Hansard), and DUP politicians’ social media output. These secondary sources were supplemented by data drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews with DUP politicians.⁵ Given the primary aim of this paper is to provide an explanation for DUP support for Trump, a logical step was to speak with those supporters. Interviewing is the method best suited to establishing the motivations of political elites and understanding the ‘meaning’ of their behaviour (Rathbun, 2010). It is also a tried-and-tested means of exploring the inner machinations of largely secretive or closed-off organisations, including political parties, which speaks to our secondary aim of addressing the internal factional tensions and relations within the DUP, a party renowned for its opacity. Altogether, the adopted methodological approach or strategy could be labelled as one of ‘bricolage’ (Rhodes & Corbett, 2020, p. 122); piecing together diverse and disparate fragments of evidence to construct a coherent and comprehensive account. It is to that account that we now turn.

3. Explaining DUP support for Donald J. Trump

3.1. An Orange White House

The remarkably convivial relations between Donald Trump and an element within the DUP was, to a significant degree, the product of a longstanding connection between two families: the Paisleys and the Trumps. That connection dates to 2006 when Trump, in his pre-political era, met with Ian Paisley Sr, then DUP leader, and his son, Ian Paisley Jr, to explore investment opportunities in their North Antrim constituency. That visit would prove the catalyst for a decade of annual Trump-Paisley engagements in the US or Northern Ireland. The warmth and affection between the two families appears sincere; Paisley Jr revealing how Trump had christened his father ‘the Legend’ (Paisley, 2017). Crucially, the connection would endure with Trump’s election to office in 2016, with Paisley Jr granted unprecedented access for a Northern Ireland politician to the presidential court – moving, as he put it, from ‘behind the guest line’ and into the President’s ‘inner sanctum’ (Paisley, 2018). From that position he would operate as the DUP’s point man, securing direct access for several party colleagues to the President and key figures in his administration, including US Vice President Mike Pence. The clearest demonstration of the DUP’s clout and presence in Washington, facilitated by Paisley Jr, came with the annual St Patrick’s Day receptions hosted by the White House. The most significant event in the diplomatic calendar for US-Irish relations, the receptions were populated by DUP figures to a degree not seen before or since the Trump presidency.

The Trump-Paisley connection therefore presented an unprecedented opportunity for DUP influence in Washington, and by extension political unionism. Ian Paisley Jr framed it as a serendipitous personal relationship to be maximised and capitalised on:

I was put in a fortunate position … that I have this contact. This contact now just happens to be one of the most powerful men in the world and I would be foolhardy not to keep that contact open and [say]: ‘Hey, remember Northern Ireland in all the stuff that you are actually doing’ (cited in Ó Beacháin, 2018, p. 123).

Building on this, several DUP interviewees would present the party’s ties with Trump as ‘an opening’ to break the historical pattern of American intervention in the affairs of Northern Ireland. It is widely accepted that, from the 1970s until Trump’s election, US policy on Northern Ireland was more ‘Green’ than ‘Orange’ (Guelke, 2012; O'Clery, 1997; O'Kane, 2021). US Presidents, their governments, influential US politicians, and large swathes of the Washington ‘beltway’ were typically more amenable to the representatives of constitutional nationalism and republicanism, than to unionists. This was especially true during the Irish peace process and, to a lesser extent, the period immediately following the Good Friday Agreement (Clancy, 2007; Cunningham, 2009). Regardless of whether such ‘Greenness’ was genuine or performative (see Dixon, 2006), the unionist perception that the US government was far from an honest broker on Northern Ireland stuck and resonated especially deeply with those of an anti-Agreement persuasion, not least the DUP (Wilson, 2000; Clancy, 2007). Prior to Trump’s election, unionists cut largely frustrated and isolated figures in Washington and their diplomatic approach towards US policy on Northern Ireland could best be described as one of containment and modest dilution: unable to overturn the dominance of nationalists and republicans in the power centres of Washington – turning them ‘Orange’ – the best they could do was work to lighten the shade of ‘Green’.

What the Trump presidency presented, according to those in the DUP, was a critical juncture where unionists could shift from a strategy of dilution to one of conversion. As with many other aspects of international diplomacy (see Jervis et al., 2018), Trump ruptured established relations and patterns in respect of US policy on Northern Ireland – and so opened new possibilities for those within the DUP to potentially exploit. Again, it is Paisley Jr who perhaps captures this best, writing:

It is without doubt that the unconventional and truly unique nature of the US President has opened up an opportunity of very direct access that unionists have to the presidency and to the politics of DC (Paisley, 2018)

Here, in the words of another DUP member, was a president who unlike his ‘Democratic opponent and his Democratic predecessor would hold an open door towards unionism’.⁶ Or, as another explained, ‘[Trump was] someone [the DUP] could work with, to use to the advantage of unionism; even to just get America to be neutral on Northern Ireland, and positively neutral’.⁷ The same individual went on to situate Trump in the broader arc of US policy on Northern Ireland and in the historical context of unionist diplomatic impotence in Washington:

There just wasn’t the access for unionists. And it was always because the Irish American lobby really worked the strategy of: ‘the Yanks are used to push the Brits to push the unionists, to get things’. That was the way the Irish American lobby worked and they were being pushed in turn by the Irish [government]. So there was this circle: from Ireland pushing the Yanks, to pushing the Brits, to push us. I think during [George W.] Bush’s term we stopped that and during Trump’s term we pushed back.

A similar sentiment underpins Ian Paisley Jr’s styling of the Trump presidency as a ‘coup’ for unionists and a ‘turning of the tide’ in their battle with nationalists for influence in Washington (Paisley, 2018). Crudely put, it was a diplomatic turnaround: Brits In, Irish Out.

Indeed, another theme in DUP discourse on the Trump connection – one that runs alongside that of unprecedented opportunity for unionist influence – is that of ethno-national point-scoring. Again, the clearest expression of this comes from Paisley Jr who, in characteristically colourful terms, crowed: ‘Unionists having access to the White House really gets the goat of republicans’ (cited in Deeney, 2020).⁸ In a similar vein, he speculated how the then Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, faced with a St Patrick’s Day reception heavily populated by unionists, ‘must have thought how outnumbered he was’ (Paisley, 2018). That nationalists and republicans were critical of Trump and actively disengaged with his administration encouraged those in the DUP to engage themselves, almost reflexively. Their support for Trump could be partly explained then through reference to base unionist habitus, a zero-sum disposition identified by others (see Todd, 2005; White, 2007) and perhaps best expressed in this instance as: ‘thine enemy’s enemy is thine friend’. Interestingly, given the period under study (2016-2020), a similar motive has been identified in attempts to explain the DUP’s support for a Leave vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum (Murphy & Evershed, 2022, p. 71; see also Coakley, 2020) – a position held and advocated by the most ardent Trump supporters in the party’s ranks (see below). The logic in that case of ‘if they’re for it, we’re against it’ can simply be altered to ‘if they’re against him, we’re for him’. Again, on this point, the relative scarcity of opportunities for unionists to prevail over nationalists and republicans on the international stage is worthy of note. The traditional isolation and impotence of unionists in the US speaks to a broader poverty of relations and their weak international presence relative to nationalists and republicans (see Gupta, 2017, p. 96). The history of unionists ‘in the world’ is that they are largely friendless (Dixon, 2006; 1995). Viewed in that context, the Trump presidency presented those in the DUP with a rare, perhaps irresistible, opportunity to correct that imbalance and register a symbolic communal victory on the international stage.

3.2. A Brexiteer White House

The characterisation of the Trump White House as an unprecedently ‘Orange’ one also reflected the way in which its preferences and objectives were closely aligned with the DUP on the issue of Brexit. The DUP was one of only two parties at Westminster to have campaigned for the UK to leave the European Union (EU). Following the 2017 UK general election, the party – and its parliamentary wing in particular – became a key player in the negotiations over the UK’s future relationship with the EU, as it forged a confidence-and-supply deal with the Conservatives. A central issue in those UK-EU negotiations was the future trading arrangements on the Irish border; what would become known as the Northern Ireland Protocol. The prospect of a trade deal between the US and UK was presented by Brexiteers, including those in the DUP, as an alternative to a comparative UK-EU deal nixed by the implementation of a ‘hard border’ in Ireland. That potential trade deal with the US represented, therefore, an important point of leverage for the British government, and associated Brexit supporters, in its negotiations with the EU. As such, Washington became the site of an intense diplomatic battle between the British and Irish governments. As Kennedy (2022, p. 252) notes of the time, there was a ‘reinvigoration’ of efforts by the Irish government to mobilise the diplomatic and lobbying weight of Irish America, with the aim of ‘‘actively building a Green Wall’ to stymy British diplomacy in Washington’. As one DUP figure explained, those efforts, compounded by the energetic lobbying by Sinn Féin and the SDLP, led to the impression that the ‘pan-nationalist front’ of the Irish peace process of the 1990s was being ‘resurrected’ in the battle over Brexit.⁹

In Trump, however, the DUP possessed a powerful ally in its pursuit of a Brexit deal in line with unionist interests. Deeming him a ‘friend of Ulster’ (Deeney, 2020), he was an important means by which the party could either deconstruct or vault any ‘Green Wall’ in Washington. Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit throughout his tenure. Dubbing himself ‘Mr Brexit’, he drew parallels between his own shock election victory and Vote Leave’s success in the 2016 referendum, and on several occasions proselytised on the advantages of Brexit, including downplaying the significance of the Irish border issue, often in the presence of bemused Irish politicians, diplomats, or dignitaries (Wilson, 2017, pp. 553–554; Ó Beacháin, 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019). Indeed, there is an interesting overlap in terms of what motivated Trump and the DUP to support Brexit. As Murphy and Evershed explain, the primary appeal of Brexit for the DUP was that it would, ‘reaffirm in clearer, precise, and more bounded terms the extent of British sovereignty, particularly in and over Northern Ireland’ (2020a, p. 394). Trump’s support for Brexit has been couched in similarly sovereigntist terms. Wilson (2017, pp. 553–554) notes how Trump’s Brexiteer leanings did not just reflect a long-held preference for deregulation or flow from his nativist and isolationist ‘America First’ platform, rather it stemmed from a belief that, ‘Nation states, not international agreements and organisations, were the natural and appropriate units for organising societies and their affairs’.¹⁰ Both the DUP and Trump therefore shared an understanding of what Brexit meant, in terms of spirit, and held to a similar vision for it.

On the issue of the Brexit negotiations themselves the unconventional nature of the Trump presidency and the DUP’s good relations with him are, again, noteworthy. Leading diplomats during the Brexit withdrawal process have acknowledged the exceptionally personalistic style of the Trump presidency and their assessment, at the time, was that those with a direct link to Trump were at a distinct advantage in terms of influencing his stance on the issue. As Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador to the United States during the Trump presidency, recalls:

[It] seemed to us [the British government] – that the Trump administration was all about one man, so we spent a lot of time trying to get close to, and to influence, one man. (McDonald, 2021)

Hence, McDonald continues, Prime Minister Theresa May’s unprecedented haste to visit Trump’s White House following his election, in an attempt to establish that personal connection and cultivate influence. In the same vein, David O’Sullivan, then EU Ambassador to the US, has acknowledged the close personal connection between the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Trump, and the advantages that brought the arch-Brexiteer in terms of shaping White House policy on Brexit (O’Sullivan, 2021). That the DUP boasted a longstanding connection to Trump, via the Paisleys, and was also plugged into a small nexus of Trump-friendly Brexiteers, which included Farage (see Geoghegan, 2020), was therefore a key source of potential influence for the party. In short, the DUP’s friends tended to be Trump’s friends, and such friendships were believed to matter in the contestation over Brexit.

For his supporters in the DUP, Trump was therefore an asset to be protected. With his re-election came the possibility, however faint, that the Brexit endgame would break in the party’s favour. Importantly, however, that support was conditioned by the perceived threat posed to the DUP’s interests and standing by Trump’s opponent in 2020: Joe Biden. On Northern Ireland, the contrast between Biden and Trump’s personal and policy preferences was stark. Biden’s showcasing of his Irish heritage was a hallmark of his political career, as was his active involvement in the Irish American lobby in the US (see Cochrane, 2021; Cox, 2021). Those facts were not lost on those in the DUP. Nor were several instances of attempted joviality by Biden which, for those interviewed, came laced with an underlying ‘anti-unionism’ and laid bare his partiality on Irish affairs.¹¹ Of greatest, and more immediate, concern however was that Biden’s nationalist sympathies would inform his administration’s stance on Brexit and future Irish border arrangements. That was made clear to the DUP and their fellow Brexiteers by the Biden camp during the campaign, with the candidate and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, warning that a hard border in Ireland would amount to the ‘destruction of the Good Friday accords’ and scotch any potential post-Brexit US-UK trade deal.

For those in the DUP, the ‘dark prophecies’ of Biden and Pelosi were simply the continuation of an historical theme by ‘Democratic Party luminaries’ on Irish affairs.¹² Biden was viewed in the context of a traditionally ‘pro-Irish and pro-EU’ Democratic Party, from the Clinton administration’s appeasement of republicans in the Irish peace process, through to Barack Obama’s unsolicited interventions on behalf of the Remain side during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. A Biden White House would therefore, inevitably, be a ‘Green’ one; restoring the traditional order on Irish affairs to Washington following the pro-British-pro-Unionist interregnum of Trump and relegating the DUP back to a position of relative international isolation. Worryingly for the DUP that was a forecast echoed by their political opponents. Leo Varadkar, then Tánaiste, for example, described the prospect of a Biden presidency as ‘positive news [for Ireland]’, because ‘the Democrats [have] watched our back on Brexit’ (cited in Cleppe, 2020). The Biden-Trump contest was therefore viewed and framed in characteristically zero-sum and ethno-nationalist terms by those in the DUP, with the interests of unionism pitched squarely against those of nationalism. Displaying characteristic abrasiveness, DUP MP Sammy Wilson, would capture that conflation of Brexit and unionist interests, tweeting: ‘Joe Biden is a parrot for Irish nationalism and their falsehoods [regarding] the Belfast Agreement. I would far rather have an American eagle in President Trump than a nationalist parrot in the White House’ (Wilson, 2020). Ian Paisley Jr would provide something of an easy (and more polite) translation for Wilson’s invective, explaining how Trump was ‘the much more helpful President to the United Kingdom as we exit the EU than Joe Biden’ (cited in Deeney, 2020). It was the spectre of a Biden presidency, and the clear threat it seemingly posed to the Brexit project, which helped reinforce and sustain the support for Trump within the DUP.

3.3. An evangelical White House

Another key ideological commonality between Trump and his DUP supporters concerns a conservative and illiberal policy agenda shaped, in large part, by their respective relationships with evangelical Christianity. Trump’s election copper-fastened the tie between the Republican Party and white conservative evangelicals, a constituency referred to as the Christian Right and whose concerted political mobilisation dates to the 1960s (Fea, 2018; Zeruto, 2022). Despite a long list of past moral indiscretions, his ‘bad manners’ on the campaign trail (see below), and the dubiousness of his own faith, Trump received the backing of the Christian Right in 2016 because they viewed him as a political leader who would implement their long-desired radically conservative legislative agenda and oversee ‘the return of Christian public culture’ (Hochschild, 2016, p. 224). His rhetorical dedication to the policy preferences of evangelical voters rendered him, in the words of one former evangelical, ‘a necessary autocrat … useful to the cause’ (Herrmann, 2021). That cause has been primarily focused on reversing progressive changes concerning sexual and reproductive rights, namely marriage equality and abortion provision. However, its scope has expanded to include opposition to several aspects related to social and economic justice more broadly, including minority rights, structural racism, government intervention and taxation (Deckman et al., 2017); as well as those issues associated with the general project of ‘liberal internationalism’, including environmentalism, multiculturalism, and immigration (McCammack, 2007; Veldman, 2019; Zaleha & Szasz, 2015). Nativism is also an observable characteristic of politicised evangelicalism. The constituency has close ties to the white nationalist movement, sharing its complexes of ‘besiegement’ and ‘crisis’, and concerns around preserving national, cultural, and moral ‘purity’ (Geary et al., 2020; Herrmann, 2021). As Gorski (2017, p. 348) explains, for evangelicals, ‘Trump was their great white hope. He promised to cleanse the national body by purging it of ethno-cultural pollutants and sealing it off against future penetrations’. As president, Trump would largely deliver on his campaign promises; symbolically, in concrete policy terms and, most significantly, in his nomination of three conservative Justices to the US Supreme Court. That 85 percent of self-identifying white evangelical voters who regularly attended religious services would vote for Trump in 2020 demonstrates the Christian Right’s satisfaction with his presidency (Norton, 2021).

What motivated US-based evangelicals to support Trump also held true for those in the DUP. Indeed, Trump’s status as a promoter of evangelical political interests and powerful bulwark against a transnational liberal ‘tide’ was, for some in the DUP, the most appealing aspect of his presidency. As one interviewee explained:

I wouldn’t overplay the emphasis on Trump being in support of Brexit and therefore that coloured our view. I think it was more fundamentally the issue that he was on the right. He was pushing against this radical leftist agenda that seemed to prevail. At the time when he was in power, [Jeremy] Corbyn and the whole Momentum movement was taking off in the Labour Party, and [Trump] was seen as a more right-wing move against that type of radically liberal politics, generally’, which included Brexit but that wasn’t the totality of it.¹³

The role of fundamentalist Christianity in structuring the intensely conservative politics of the DUP has been well-documented (see Tonge et al., 2014). The abiding popular impression of the party is that of an uncompromising ethnoreligious entity serving up ‘an innovative cocktail of fundamentalism with intense nationalism’ (Mitchel, 2003, p. 204). That package of ‘politicised Protestantism’ (Gomez Martinez & Tonge, 2016, p. 66) a product of its curious genesis as a party established and led by the founder of an evangelical sect, in Ian Paisley Sr and his Free Presbyterian movement. Crucially, it remains an accurate description of the party’s policy vision, as it holds firm to an evangelically-inspired illiberalism (see Matthews, 2019). Rather tellingly, the party’s most prominent Trump supporters also happen to be some of its most ardent social conservatives. Such opposition to moral liberalisation extends, however, beyond the party’s elected representatives and leadership, permeating every level of the party. As one former MLA – and Trump supporter – affirmed: ‘the overwhelming majority in the Party would be anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti- so much of what is happening in our society’ (cited in Tonge et al., 2014, p. 153).

The DUP has, therefore, always occupied the illiberal space that the GOP has drifted inexorably towards due to growing evangelical influence. Indeed, understanding the support of those within the DUP for Trump requires acknowledging the party’s historical connection to those US-based evangelical politicos involved in the steady capture of the Republican Party. As has been well-documented, the DUP and the Christian Right in the US have conspired in a transnational campaign against liberalisation since the late 1960s. Paisley Sr, as moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church and then leader of the DUP, forged close ties with US-based evangelicals and socially conservative political figures, which brought the ‘cross-pollination’ of theology, ideology, style, and rhetoric (see Geary, 2020; Greer, 2009; Jordan, 2013). Several of those interviewed presented that connection as both enduring and significant, with Trump’s presidency framed as both the ‘latest chapter’ in that longer tale and important to the political ambitions of evangelicalism generally. Unlike Brexit, Trump’s stance on socio-moral issues would have little to no direct impact upon the politics of Northern Ireland or the fortunes of the DUP. However, that is to overlook the fact that evangelicals regard themselves as being engaged in a global struggle to defend Christian morals and values, and to resist and overturn liberalisation wherever it manifests. A victory for evangelicals in the US, as embodied in the Trump presidency, was therefore a victory for evangelicals in Northern Ireland, including those in the DUP.

3.4. A populist White House

The good relations between elements within the DUP and Donald Trump also reflected their shared populist qualities, in terms of discourse, ideology, and style. Trump’s candidacy and presidency are widely regarded as being populist in nature. In 2016 he campaigned as ‘the populist par excellence’ (Oliver & Rahn, 2016, p. 189), styling himself as both saviour and tribune for ‘ordinary’ Americans long ill-served by a ‘corrupt’ elite (see Nai & Maier, 2018; Schneiker, 2020; White, 2016). As noted in a previous section, Trump stressed the parallels between the factors and forces which propelled him to the White House and those that had delivered a Leave vote in the UK’s Brexit referendum, framing both events in quintessentially populist terms. That was a post-mortem echoed by his DUP supporters. Sammy Wilson viewed Trump’s election through a Brexit-lens, presenting it as another demonstration of ‘the will of ordinary people who like straight-talking and are fed up of a ruling elite who think they know better than the rest of the population’ (cited in McAdam, 2016). Wilson’s parliamentary colleague, Ian Paisley Jr, also framed both events as mutual links in a populist zeitgeist:

[We’ve seen] a revolution in our relationship with Europe … and now we’ve seen a revolutionary change in the grassroots, ordinary, authentic voice of America fighting back and saying, ‘We want more from our politicians; we’re not satisfied with the professional political class. We want politics to be authentic’. (Paisley, 2016)

In a separate and more succinct assessment Paisley Jr would state that Trump’s election, ‘was about the little guy biting back – and he bit back with a vengeance’ (cited in News Letter, 2016).

Little guys biting back – a straightforwardly populist synopsis – does not, however, fully capture what lay behind Trump’s success nor, crucially, the appeal he held for those in the DUP. Populism is primarily a strategy to mobilise support, which needs to be combined with another ideology to acquire force and meaning – and, for many, it was nativism which brought much of the ideological colour to Trumpism (see Lieberman et al., 2019; Verbeek & Zaslove, 2017). As a ‘populist radical right’ politician, Trump fused ‘the distinct traits of a strong nationalist and ethnocentric identity with a deep suspicion of elites and cultural pretenses’ (Oliver & Rahn, 2016, p. 202). Presenting the concept of ‘ethno-nationalist populism’, sociologist Bart Bonikowski (2017) argues that the potency of Trump’s political appeal derived from the ‘elective affinity’ of populism and a specifically ethnic form of nationalism. Both are manifestations of general in-group/out-group thinking, with populism’s in-group being ‘the people’, and in the case of nationalism it is ‘legitimate’ members of ‘the nation’. In the ethno-nationalist populist calculus ‘the people’ therefore become equated with a specific ethnic or racial group and, as with conventional populism, it derives impetus from ‘the perception of crisis, breakdown or threat’ (Taggart, 2000, pp. 93–94). More specifically, as Bonikowski (2017, p. 184) explains, the potency of ethno-nationalist populism stems from the ‘acute sense of collective status threat’ felt by ethnic majorities whose predominance is under pressure from other minority ethnic communities. That pressure flows from a suite of demographic, social, and cultural changes which ethnic majorities interpret as an affront to their group identity and security. The typical lament of the ethno-nationalist populist politician and supporter is: ‘I don’t recognise my country’– thus legitimacy is lent to political campaigns that promise to return power and status to the aggrieved community and which foster resentment towards elites, immigrants, and ethnic, racial and religious minorities.

In the case of Donald Trump, the ethnic majority whose sense of ‘status loss’ he tapped into and aggravated were White Americans. The emergence and growth of ‘white grievance’ in contemporary US politics has been well-documented (see Blumer, 1958; Norton & Sommers, 2011; Stoner, 2022), its politicisation dating back to the civil rights era of the 1960s and crystalising in the Republican Party’s adoption of a strategy designed ‘to win over white voters by playing off their fears, constructing an endless number of foes’ (Neville-Shepard & Neville-Shepard, 2022, p. 37). Under Trump, the articulation and strategic mobilisation of ‘white victimhood’ would reach unprecedented levels (see Jardina, 2019). As a candidate, he persistently framed whites as politically, economically, and culturally disadvantaged to the benefit of ethnic (and cultural) minorities, primarily Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims (Johnson, 2017). That scenario, according to Trump, was aided by a loosely defined ‘liberal elite’, which included a Democratic Party reliant on a multi-cultural support base and intent on further progressive change under the banner of social justice (Holmes, 2021). Trump’s zero-sum equating of those advances in social equality with ‘white loss’ stoked the sense of white America as a community ‘under siege’ (Hooker, 2023).

Importantly, however, Trump’s amplification of white plight was accompanied by a promise to restore that community’s status and power. Trump, as ‘populist superhero’ (Schneiker, 2020), would reject the norms of democracy, globalisation, and multiculturalism in order to lift the siege. As Rowland (2019, p. 346) explains, Trump utilised a form of ethno-nationalist populism that fulfilled ‘an affective function by providing scapegoats to blame for loss of cultural status and a charismatic outsider who promises to return the nation to an earlier Edenic time’. As much was implied in his pledge to ‘Make America Great Again’ and evidenced in the support he drew from white supremacist groups (Hawley, 2017; Neiwert, 2017). Those conjoined narratives of victimisation and redemption would remain steadfast features of Trump’s Presidency. As ‘sufferer-in-chief’, he kept his supporters in ‘the perpetual liminality between defeat and triumph’ (Kelly, 2020, p. 3) – in power yet still besieged, and so self-pitying and fearful.

The discursive repertoire of ethno-nationalist populism has also been an ever-present fixture of the DUP’s political offering. Established as the political vehicle for the Rev. Ian Paisley – a figure who, for most of his political career, possessed the defining characteristics of the charismatic populist radical right ‘strongman’ (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017) – the party’s appeal has largely rested on a muscular and intensely exclusionary brand of ethnic unionism. ‘The people’ whose cultural and political interests it defends are those in the protestant unionist loyalist community in Northern Ireland (see Shirlow & McGovern, 1997).¹⁴ The clearest source of ‘betrayal’ and ‘threat’ to the unionist position – central to which is the maintenance of the constitutional link between Northern Ireland and Great Britain – comes from those in the catholic nationalist community; as such they are excluded from ‘the people’. In classic populist fashion, however, the DUP, for much of its existence, also directed its ire upwards, towards an ‘elite’ whom it accused of undermining the defence of unionist interests, either through malfeasance or incompetence (or a combination of both). Indeed, the DUP’s electoral rise – moving as it did from a fringe position to becoming the dominant party in the unionist bloc – can be partly explained through its propagation of a form of intra-communal populism, whereby it styled itself as ‘the party of plain-speaking, honest Ulstermen’ (Dixon, 2018, p. 227), railing against an ‘out-of-touch establishment’ embodied in the so-called ‘Big House’ (read cosmopolitan) unionism of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), its direct electoral rival (see Mitchell, 2015a, p. 153; Tonge et al., 2014, pp. 14–16). In keeping with the ethno-nationalist populist playbook, the DUP has therefore directed its ‘antagonisms’ both horizontally and vertically (Bonikowski et al., 2019, p. 60).

The DUP’s permanent state of vigilance – against enemies both internal and external – reflects the dominant notes of ethnic unionism: fear and fatalism. Indeed, the acute sense of ‘collective status threat’ identified by Bonikowski as the fuel of ethno-nationalist populism arguably finds its archetype in the political worldview of the DUP and its supporters. As several studies of unionism demonstrate, the community is marked by a deep ontological insecurity about the constitutional status of the nation and the integrity of its cultural identity (see Finlay, 2001; McVeigh, 2015; Mitchell, 2015b). Perhaps the most common label attached to unionists, often by themselves, is that of a people ‘under siege’ (Darby, 1976; Edwards, 2023). Fear and fatalism, as Mitchell (2015a, p. 193) explains, have therefore ‘always featured heavily in the unionist personality’ – and, historically, it has been the DUP who has best articulated, and done most to stoke, that besieged disposition. As with Donald Trump and white America, the DUP has worked tirelessly to strategically mobilise a sense of existential crisis within the unionist community whilst simultaneously presenting itself as the party best positioned to defend its interests.¹⁵ Themes of victimisation and discrimination have been central to the party’s discourse, with unionists consistently framed as ‘losers’ in respect of a range of socio-political and cultural developments vis-à-vis nationalists. Those losses run from the peace process through to the fallout from Brexit and includes what the DUP presents as a live ‘culture war’ waged by nationalists against unionists, the aim of which is to ‘hollow-out’ the Britishness of Northern Ireland (see Ganiel, 2007; Hearty, 2015; McAuley, 2009; Mitchell, 2015a). That prevailing sense of unionist decline has been exacerbated by changes in the neat demographic and electoral balance between the two principal ethnic blocs, and the attendant threat that is believed to hold for Northern Ireland’s constitutional future and the interests of unionism (see McClements, 2022). In summary, the DUP represents an ethnic group long sensitive to its loss of standing, not merely peering into future minority status, be it political or demographic, but actively coming to terms with it – and whilst the party may have lost some of the apocalyptic fervour associated with peak Paisleyism, it remains most comfortable articulating a politics of grievance and embattlement.

The shared populist qualities of the DUP and Trump also extends to their mutual adoption of an ostensibly transgressive political style.¹⁶ Here, our focus shifts from the discursive content of populism to its performative and aesthetic qualities – what has been described as its ‘inherent theatricality’ (Moffitt, 2016, p. 4). That style is abrasive, disagreeable, and deliberately provocative, displaying a clear disregard for ‘appropriate’ ways of acting in the political realm, or what Moffitt (2016) calls ‘bad manners’ (see Arditi, 2007; Heinisch, 2003; Wodak et al., 2021). This can take the form of political incorrectness, which itself frequently involves ‘culturally vulgar’ slurs against minority groups, and as Ostiguy (2009) observes, that ‘low’ style distinguishes the populist from other typical, ‘mainstream’ politicians who practice a ‘high’ politics, marked by its sobriety, rationality, politeness, and technocratic qualities. It also ‘signals to the people that the populist politician will go to great lengths to protect her interests, even if it means bending or breaking the rules’ (Oliver & Rahn, 2016, p. 191), thereby solidifying the bond between them. By violating political and socio-cultural norms the populist politician is providing evidence of their anti-establishment, outsider, authentic qualities – matching words with action. There is, therefore, a knowingness to the performance; it is a ‘celebratory desecration’ (Ostiguy, 2017, p. 75) of the rules of the game, designed to illicit a reaction from supporters and opponents.

Donald Trump’s ‘bad manners’ have been well documented. A norms-busting, transgressive style was central to his strategy and appeal, resulting in a candidacy and presidency ‘awash in examples of shocking political incorrectness’ (Theye & Melling, 2018, p. 331). As well as helping distinguish his leadership from the technocratic ‘high’ politics of the Obama era and that of his electoral rival Hillary Clinton, his willingness to ‘say the unsayable’ (and often do the undoable too) was for many of his supporters a sign of both his authenticity and willingness to defend their interests (Schneiker, 2020). As Shafer (2015) notes, Trump’s complete rejection of political correctness marked him as ‘authentic in certain corners and [advanced] his cred as a plainspoken guardian of the American way’. This infuriated and perplexed his political rivals and contemporaries, in almost equal measure. As one exasperated Irish diplomat explained in the wake of one of Trump’s many transgressions, ‘He just breaks the accepted standards of good behaviour time and time again’ (cited in Agenda NI, 2018).

A similar observation has often been made of the DUP over the course of its history. Most attention, in this regard, has focused on the loud and ‘low’ antics of Ian Paisley Sr, whose rhetoric and behaviour regularly slipped the bounds of what could be considered normal or ‘polite’ politics. However, in terms of strategy and style, the DUP would be largely built in Paisley’s ‘bad mannered’ image. As a party of protest, it engaged in the politics of deliberate provocation, even demonstrating a certain shamelessness in its transgressive nature, leaning into it, and thus creating a contrast with the UUP’s more sober offering. Importantly, in the political context of Northern Ireland, such abrasiveness bolstered its credentials as a robust defender of unionist interests.

Provocativeness is not, however, a past condition of the DUP, confined to its time as a Paisleyite protest movement. Rather, it remains an observable feature of its ethno-nationalist populist offering. For a specific instance, which predates Trump’s election, we can look to then DUP MLA Gregory Campbell’s infamous lampooning of the Irish language in the Assembly chamber in 2014.¹⁷ Offered in the context of an ongoing debate about the introduction of legislation on the language, Campbell’s skit was a clear example of the DUP’s ethno-nationally-infused bad manners; a deliberate provocation, belittling nationalist culture and, in turn, demonstrating to the party’s supporters that he was defending theirs.¹⁸ When interpreted this way, Campbell’s transgressive act was the modern-day equivalent of Ian Paisley Sr throwing snowballs at a visiting Irish Taoiseach on the grounds of Stormont in 1967. The DUP remains relaxed busting the norms of conventional ‘high’ politics to defend the unionist cause.

That the DUP’s most notorious provocateurs also happened to be some of its most fervent Trump supporters is, we argue, no coincidence. Trump’s abrasive style and behaviour, beyond the pale for so many of his contemporaries, proved tolerable to those in the DUP – likely even admirable to some – in large part because it chimed with and mirrored their own long-established approach to performing populism and their sensibilities concerning political (in)correctness. Note, for example, Sammy Wilson’s delight at Trump’s election:

Finally, we have a world leader who doesn’t give a thought to political correctness and who is impervious to the criticisms of the media, the luvvies in the celebrity world and all the other bastions of political correctness. No wonder they are going apoplectic, and it is a wonderful sight to see. (Wilson, 2017)

In Trump, it appears, the DUP’s populists saw a political leader sympathetic to their needs and who also held to the mantra that ‘defending ‘the people’s’ interests isn’t pretty’. That overlap, in both content and style, was not lost on some at the time. Consider, for instance, an online quiz curated by one local newspaper in 2018 titled: ‘Who said it: Donald Trump or Sammy Wilson?’ (Irish News, 2018). But perhaps the neatest illustration of both the ideological and stylistic synergy between the DUP and Trump comes from a Paisleyite Pepe the Frog meme posted in 2017 to 4Chan, the internet forum of choice for the Alt-Right, a largely online-based political movement in the US specialising in politically incorrect hate speech (see Rieger et al., 2021). The Pepe meme had, by that stage, been appropriated as an Alt-Right leitmotif and come to serve as a ‘a symbol for Trump’s darker rhetoric’ (i.e. his nativism) (Cohen, 2020). The specific version of the meme in question riffed on an infamous image of Ian Paisley Sr from the 1985 UK general election, wearing a DUP rosette and wielding a sledgehammer emblazoned with the slogan ‘Smash Sinn Féin’ – with Paisley replaced by a Pepe adorned in the colours of the Ulster banner (see Figure 1). Several qualities of the DUP were listed below the image by the original poster, the most telling of which, when it comes to appreciating the abrasiveness of their ethno-nationalist populism, being: ‘[they] don’t fuck about’.

Figure 1. Ian Paisley Sr Pepe the Frog meme (Ball & Broderick, 2017).

4. Trump and the ‘modern’ DUP

Up to this point our focus has been on the myriad threads connecting Donald Trump and his DUP supporters; their shared preferences, traits and complexes, and how those conditioned their good relations. A secondary aim of this paper is to consider how the Trump presidency related to the ideological tensions within the DUP, and the party’s evolution and trajectory. Our argument in this section, put simply, is that Trump was an important contributing factor in the emboldening of the DUP’s populists and to what has been described as ‘a regressive deviation in the trajectory’ of the party’s ‘journey’ during the Brexit era (Murphy & Evershed, 2020b, p. 473). To best appreciate that however requires sketching out the contours of that journey and the ideological development of the DUP prior to Trump’s election.

Despite a reputation for message discipline and organisational cohesion, the DUP is comprised of two competing factions. The first contains exponents of an essentially unreconstructed Paisleyism: an uncompromising and ethnic brand of unionism, stridently evangelical and, as a result, demonstrably socially conservative. The labels applied to this wing include ‘traditionalist, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘hard-line’ or, tellingly – given our focus in the previous section – ‘populist’ (Dixon, 2018). Its members are typically DUP ‘originals’; those who either joined the party when it was a protest movement or possess a familial tie to somebody who did (Tonge et al., 2014) – and from the party’s formation in the early seventies to the peace process of the 1990s it was predominant.

That would change, however, with the emergence and growth of a second faction, which advances a relatively more moderate and inclusive political offering than Paisleyism, more civic than ethnic in its unionism, and more pragmatic in its approach to both policy and strategy. Dixon (2018) refers to those in this camp as ‘tacticians’, whilst others prefer the term ‘modernisers’. The architect and chief strategist behind that faction was Peter Robinson – who succeeded Paisley Sr as party leader in 2008 after a 28 year stint as his deputy – and it is populated by a typically younger generation of DUP member, including those who defected from the UUP in the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, bringing with them their more moderate political attitudes and sensibilities (Gomez Martinez & Tonge, 2016; see also Tonge et al., 2014). From the early 2000s that Robinsonian faction would grow in power and authority, capturing the party’s leadership and orchestrating its remarkable entry into power-sharing government with Sinn Féin in 2007 via a process of ‘modernisation’ (Gormley-Heenan & Mac Ginty, 2008).

With devolution resuscitated, the attention of the DUP’s modernisers would turn to the party’s future growth strategy, to cement its position as the largest party in Northern Ireland and, in turn, safeguard the region’s constitutional status. Key tactical steps included articulating an ostensibly more inclusive form of unionism; lowering the volume of the party’s fundamentalist discourse; and accentuating its policy offering on so-called ‘bread and butter’ issues. This has been interpreted as the DUP responding to the creeping ‘normalisation’ of Northern Ireland in the period following 2007, with other alternative policy dimensions growing in salience alongside the dominant ‘Green and Orange’ issue, in a context of increasing secularisation (Tilley et al., 2021). The modernisers’ antennae were therefore alert to ‘a new political space developing in Northern Ireland’ (Robinson cited in Tonge et al., 2014, p. 104), their target audience being middle-class, moderate unionists who typically supported the UUP, the Alliance Party, or opted not to vote at all. With Arlene Foster’s election as party leader – herself another UUP blow-in and Robinson acolyte – and the party’s record-breaking performance in the 2016 Assembly election, Robinsonism appeared to have consolidated its hold over Paisleyism as the chief tendency within the DUP (Matthews & Pow, 2017; Matthews & Whiting, 2022).

The 2016 election would, however, represent the high-water mark of the DUP’s modernisation experiment as a remarkable chain of events facilitated a populist renaissance within the party. The first of those was the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU in June 2016. Whilst the DUP officially campaigned to leave, the outcome of the referendum was not one that the modernisers envisaged (Murphy & Evershed, 2020a) or, following the logic of the electoral growth strategy outlined above, necessarily welcomed. More importantly, Brexit would complicate and disrupt the fragile working relationship between the DUP and a remain-supporting Sinn Féin. Less than a month after the referendum, the Northern Ireland Audit Office would issue a report on the Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI) scheme, a policy fiasco implemented during Arlene Foster’s time as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment. The DUP’s handling of the scandal, along with its increasingly belligerent stance on ethno-cultural issues, prompted the resignation of Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister in January 2017, collapsing the power-sharing institutions at Stormont and triggering a March election. The DUP’s approach to that election was to dispense with much of the moderate and inclusive rhetoric of Robinsonism and revert to a more traditionalist campaign strategy aimed squarely at the party’s core vote and intended to limit the electoral fallout from RHI (see Tonge & Evans, 2018). That hardened pitch enjoyed mixed success, preserving the DUP’s position as the largest party but, at the same time, contributing to a significant uptick in Sinn Féin’s vote by coalescing nationalist voters around it. As a result – and for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history – unionists would no longer be the majority legislative bloc.

With devolution suspended and nationalism buoyant, a somewhat beleaguered DUP would be granted almost instant relief by developments at Westminster. A snap general election in May 2017 provided the party with the opportunity to corral unionist voters around it, helped in part by the symbolic narrowing of the gap between nationalism and unionism in the Assembly elections a matter of weeks beforehand. That pitch would result in a record-breaking performance for the DUP, with 10 MPs elected. Triumph would then follow triumph, as the national result of a hung parliament forced Theresa May’s Conservative Party to strike a supply-and-confidence deal with the DUP – effectively granting it power-broker status at Westminster (see Tonge & Evans, 2018).

Among other things, that deal would have serious implications for the factional dynamic within the DUP. For several reasons many of the party’s most ardent and high-profile Paisleyites had migrated to Westminster from the Assembly over time. Part of the explanation for that migration was ideological and temperamental, as noted by several close observers of the party. The Alliance Party’s Naomi Long explains:

[Even] if the DUP in Northern Ireland had been more in favour of some kind of compromise [over Brexit] … the MPs were not those people. There are structural reasons why, in that the DUP, historically, exiled some of their more difficult people to Westminster because it was not as high profile, while keeping their more cooperative, collaborative, people in the Assembly. People who were willing to hold their nose and work with Sinn Féin, as they put it, stayed in the Assembly, and others left. (Long, 2021)

A similar observation is made by Matthew O’Toole, a civil servant in 10 Downing Street during Brexit and now SDLP MLA:

[The] DUP’s MPs in Westminster tend to be older people who have had pretty interesting, shall we say, experiences in the 1980s. They [have a] history of real hard-line politics. People like Sammy Wilson and Gregory Campbell, even Nigel Dodds, are not the DUP of the twenty-first Century, to the extent there was a new DUP. A lot of those slightly more pragmatic people were in Stormont, and some of the older hard-line people had been decamped to Westminster. That created a situation where people like Sammy [Wilson], and of course (Ian) Paisley Jr, were in the mix. (O’Toole, 2021)

Ironically then, as part of the modernisation process initiated by Peter Robinson, the DUP’s leading populists were despatched to Westminster and relative political obscurity, only for events to place them centre-stage, with a megaphone. With the Assembly shuttered, leaving Arlene Foster with no administration to govern and the party’s moderates side-lined, the parliamentary group asserted itself, effectively dominating the DUP’s optics and exerting considerable influence over party strategy (see Ó Beacháin, 2018; Edwards, 2022). It was, as one DUP interviewee explained, ‘a moment for the traditionalists’.¹⁹

Crucially, however, that ‘moment’ would also encompass the Trump presidency. Rather surprisingly the Trump factor has been largely overlooked in existing accounts of the DUP’s behaviour and strategy during the Brexit era (e.g. Murphy & Evershed, 2022, pp. 78–79). That, we would argue, is an important oversight, as the backbone of the party’s populist wing was clearly stiffened by its relationship with the Trump administration. In other words, if Brexit precipitated ‘a regressive deviation in the trajectory of the DUP’s political journey’ (Murphy & Evershed, 2020b, p. 473), then Trump’s election reinforced that populist turn. As much is evidenced by the testimony of those interviewed, with Trump and the DUP’s standing in Washington regularly woven into their narrative of the political context of the time. For instance, when invited to reflect on the power and influence of the DUP during that period, one interviewee explained, with a hint of nostalgia, how:

It was a heyday. There was no doubt about it. We had great access to the Hill. We had great access to the White House. And we were exercising some influence on the Brexit negotiations.²⁰

A case can therefore be made that the bullishness of the DUP’s leading Brexiteers, their aversion to compromise, and their authority within the party itself, was both conditioned and sustained by their proximity to power in Washington and a Brexiteer White House. The Trump presidency served as a wind in the sails of the DUP’s resurgent populists.

5. Conclusion

This paper set out to account for the good relations between the DUP and Donald Trump. Why was the DUP home to some of the most loyal and vocal supporters of a Presidency which most other parties and politicians either approached cautiously or deemed entirely toxic? In many respects, the explanation for this is a simple one, largely rooted as it is in the opportunism and political expediency that has characterised the DUP for much of its existence. On the most important issue of the day – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the implications for Northern Ireland – Trump appeared a strategic asset to those in the DUP. The party’s leading Brexiteers regarded Trump as a committed fellow traveller. That assessment, and his credentials as a ‘friend of Ulster’, was informed by Trump’s longstanding connection to the Paisley family, a friendship which brought the party unprecedented access and potential influence in Washington. As such, the Trump presidency constituted an ‘Orange’ interregnum in the largely ‘Green’ history of the White House, and an opportunity for the DUP to assume a position of primacy vis-à-vis nationalists from both sides of the Irish border, not least in the contestation over Brexit. Indeed, as we have argued, to overlook Trump’s role in shaping the DUP’s strategy and behaviour concerning Brexit is to neglect a key element of that time-period.

Beyond those more obvious factors, however, lies some rather more complex points of connection between Trump and his DUP supporters. Our argument here, in summary, has been that Trump, as candidate and president, bore many of the DUP’s ideological, dispositional, and stylistic hallmarks, as a ‘bad mannered’ ethnonationalist populist with illiberal policy preferences influenced by a Christian fundamentalist value system. Put simply, much of what underpinned Trumpism has long motivated the politics and outlook of the DUP. Both president and party have tapped into the emotional register of ethno-nationalist populism and utilised the discursive repertoire associated with defending the interests of ‘besieged’ communities experiencing a form of ‘collective status loss’. Those in the DUP, with the party’s record of relative international isolation, were therefore presented with a kindred spirit and mirror image in the form of a Trump-led GOP, perhaps the closest political likeness in its history. Little surprise then that some of the most fervent cheerleaders for the Trump presidency would hail from its ranks.

Indeed, it is the populist qualities of the DUP where the greatest potential for future scholarly inquiry arguably lies. Analysing the DUP’s populism through a comparative lens can facilitate a deeper and more multi-faceted understanding of the party’s behaviour, strategy, and allegiances. The tools to do so are certainly available, nested as they are in the voluminous literature on the topic (which incidentally experienced something of an explosion in the wake of Brexit and Trump) (see Rooduijn, 2019). This paper has demonstrated the insights that can come with a closer reading of that literature, utilising the relatively freshly minted concepts of ethno-nationalist populism and ‘bad manners’. Even if such engagement serves only to attach labels to what are common and long-standing observations of the DUP, there is value nevertheless in that more precise conceptual application and substantive analysis, for those interested in the party specifically or how it contributes to the study of populism more broadly. Put another way: our understanding of populism has grown considerably in recent times and there exist new means of better understanding the type of party that the DUP has always been. Whilst the party does possess certain curious idiosyncrasies these do not render it sui generis and, so, incomparable. Nor is it entirely parochial in outlook and inspiration, as evidenced by the Trump case.²¹ How the DUP is shaped by and responds to developments elsewhere in the populist universe therefore warrants ongoing scrutiny.

Finally, exploring the DUP’s relationship with Trump also necessitated some examination of how it related to the party’s development, namely its efforts to modernise and the tensions that exist between its populists and tacticians. Support for Trump mapped neatly onto that central divide and, as we’ve argued, the DUP experienced a populist revival during the Trump era. That factional struggle is worthy of continued observation, as it is far from settled. Arlene Foster was eventually defenestrated as DUP leader in April 2021, as part of an internal coup orchestrated by the traditionalist faction. Foster has partly attributed that coup to her not possessing certain Paisleyite qualities, which her successor, Edwin Poots, held in abundance (These Times, 2023). Poots’s leadership would itself prove exceptionally short-lived, as the party’s modernisers rallied to depose him and appoint their preferred candidate in Jeffrey Donaldson. That remarkable chain of events was widely interpreted as a ‘battle for the soul’ of the party (see Blevins, 2021) and since his election as leader Donaldson has moved to reset the DUP on a course guided by the Robinsonian principles of outreach and compromise, arguing that ‘the way forward for unionism must mean less hunting for heretics and more encouragement for converts’ (DUP, 2023). Despite these signs that the tacticians are re-establishing a degree of control within the DUP, the populists remain a powerful and influential grouping. Importantly, the value of monitoring that live competition extends beyond those with an interest in the DUP alone. For some, the choice between ethnic and civic unionism – reflected in the factional struggle playing out within the DUP – holds real significance for the prospects of political unionism generally and, thereby, Northern Ireland’s future. To preserve the region’s place in the union, the argument goes, unionists need to advance a more inclusive and accommodating brand of politics (see Edwards, 2022; Emerson, 2021). The message, put simply, is moderate or die (see McBride, 2023). As the dominant party of unionism, it is likely that the DUP will be central to realising that shift in emphasis. Monitoring the struggle between its populists and modernisers is therefore a worthwhile pursuit for those interested in the direction and fate of political unionism.

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Notes on contributors

Neil Matthews

Neil Matthews is Senior Lecturer in Politics at University of Bristol. He studies issues related to party democracy, elections, and power-sharing, with a particular focus on the case of Northern Ireland. His research has appeared in Political Studies, the British Journal of Politics & International Relations, and Party Politics, among other journals.

Notes

1 The photograph was posted to the Twitter account of DUP MP Sammy Wilson.

2 For a flavour of the criticism levelled at the DUP’s Trump supporters, from most of the main parties in Britain and Ireland, see Breen (2020).

3 This review of Trump supporters only accounts for those political parties with representation in parliament following the 2019 UK General Election. Support for Trump was forthcoming from the ranks of other parties on the right, including UKIP, the Brexit Party, the Reclaim Party, and in Northern Ireland, Traditional Unionist Voice. It is also worth noting here that the DUP did not take an official position on the 2016 or 2020 US Presidential elections. Furthermore, some DUP representatives voiced their unease with aspects of the Trump presidency (see Wheeler, 2016). However, those instances of criticism or opposition were vastly outweighed, in both frequency and intensity, by the expressions of support for Trump from senior DUP figures.

4 For a notable exception see Dixon (2018).

5 Interviews were conducted on grounds of anonymity, an approach recommended to encourage candour from political elites. Given the paper’s central aim is to understand DUP support for Trump in the main there is little added value to attributable interview data. Fieldwork took place from April to May 2022.

6 Interview with the author, April 2022.

7 Interview with the author, May 2022. Emphasis added.

8 This is an informal expression, not unique to Northern Ireland, meaning to aggravate or annoy.

9 Interview with the author, May 2022.

10 This reading of Trump’s stance on Brexit finds support in general assessments of his foreign policy, a feature of which was his scepticism and criticism of other supranational organisations (e.g. the United Nations) (see Gurtov, 2020; Renshon & Suedfeld, 2021).

11 One such instance, referenced by several interviewees, was a comment made by Biden in 2015 when welcoming Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the White House as Vice President, that ‘anyone wearing orange is not welcome here’.

12 Interview with the author, May 2022.

13 Interview with the author, May 2022. Emphasis added.

14 The very adoption of the prefix ‘Democratic’ has been interpreted as a signifier of the party’s ‘populist bias’ (Rose, 1976, p. 40).

15 This comparable ‘sense of insecurity’ of white Americans and the unionist community in Northern Ireland was highlighted by some local media commentators (e.g. Lowry, 2020).

16 Again, the stylistic overlap between Trump and the DUP was identified by some media commentators (e.g., O’Connor, 2018) but until now it has not received any scholarly scrutiny.

17 Campbell began an address to the Assembly with ‘Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer’, parodying the Irish sentence ‘go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle’, often used by nationalist MLAs, and which translates as ‘thank you, Speaker’.

18 Campbell would go on to state how he would use any future legislation for the Irish language as ‘toilet paper’, whilst at the DUP party conference in 2014 he would brandish a carton of yoghurt during a speech in reference to his Assembly statement. Both instances further demonstrate the deliberate and performative nature of his cultural vulgarity (see McKay, 2020).

19 Interview with the author, May 2022.

20 Interview with the author, May 2022.

21 Geary makes a similar point regarding historical accounts of Northern Ireland, arguing that due to the region’s ‘many peculiarities’, it ‘has been unusually prone to a methodological nationalism that downplays or ignores transnational connections’ (2020, p. 137).