DUP halts all joint engagements with First Minister Michelle O'Neill over the Drumcree protest, warning her 'arrogance will have consequences'
Gavin Robinson, pictured in September, faces calls from within his own party — including Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart, who resigned as a party officer over the dispute — to pull Emma Little-Pengelly from the Executive.Michelle O'Neill, Sinn Féin vice president, whose absence from Friday's National Economic Council in Glasgow will leave Northern Ireland unrepresented at talks on the Stormont budget.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson confirmed Emma Little-Pengelly will cease all joint engagements with Michelle O'Neill, including blocking her from attending Friday's National Economic Council in Glasgow with PM Andy Burnham, Scottish First Minister John Swinney and Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth. Robinson also claimed the DUP had already blocked O'Neill from meeting Irish President Catherine Connolly three weeks earlier over what he called her "law breaking" at the Drumcree protest.
Robinson stopped short of withdrawing Little-Pengelly from her post entirely — a move that would automatically collapse the Stormont Executive — but refused to rule it out.
Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart, who quit as a DUP party officer over the row, published a five-page letter to colleagues insisting there could be no 'clever halfway house' and that the DUP 'can do no other than remove' O'Neill.
O'Neill branded Robinson's stance 'supremacist' and a 'reactive stunt driven by the DUP's own internal pressures', while Robinson fired back: 'Michelle O'Neill's arrogance will have consequences for her.'
