Carla Lockhart said the dup party had it “within its gift to remove” Michelle O'Neill as first minister, sharpening the row inside the DUP after the Drumcree dispute. Gavin Robinson rejected the idea of walking away from the institutions, saying he would not “sacrifice the stability of Northern Ireland and plunge it into further crisis”.
Lockhart, the Upper Bann MP, also said: “...we should use whatever is in our armoury to ensure that Michelle O’Neill, the person who really is supposed to be that first minister for all, as she claims, is dealt with in the appropriate way.” Her line went further than Robinson’s, and it turned a public argument over how far the party should go into a direct test of discipline.
Drumcree and the Parade Commission
The pressure built after Chris Bryant overturned the Parade Commission’s decision to facilitate an Orange march along Garvaghy Road in Portadown. The Irish News said it was vital for all the main parties to take a period for careful reflection on the events of the last two weeks, after what it described as an entirely unnecessary period of upheaval over Drumcree.
That backdrop matters because the dispute has shifted from one decision about a march to a wider argument over whether unionist anger should translate into action against the Stormont executive. Some unionists were already implying that the DUP should walk out and bring down the devolved structures, but Robinson drew a line there.
Robinson faces harder line
Robinson’s response put him on a different course from Lockhart. He refused to join calls to collapse the institutions, while she argued the party could use its own leverage against Michelle O’Neill. The split in tone left the DUP handling two messages at once: restraint from the leader and escalation from one of his own MPs.
Jim Allister added to the pressure by saying he admired Lockhart and would be proud to recruit her to his ranks. His remark put a public marker on the distance between the DUP leadership and the harder line now being voiced around it.
What Carla Lockhart means
Lockhart’s phrase about removing O’Neill points to a political mechanism, not a personal one: if a party has leverage inside the institutions, it can use that leverage to force change or raise the cost of staying in place. Her choice of words showed that she was not only criticising Sinn Féin, but pressing the DUP to consider whether its own position in the Stormont executive should be used as pressure.
For now, the immediate issue is not a formal decision but whether the party can hold a single line after a public split in tone. The next test is whether Robinson’s refusal to plunge Northern Ireland into further crisis holds the party together, or whether Lockhart’s harder language pulls it further apart.
