The wooing of the DUP: how Paisley’s party may hold the keys to No 10

The Democratic Unionist party appears, at first glance, to be an unlikely partner for any party seeking to govern the United Kingdom as a whole.

Founded by the charismatic preacher Ian Paisley, who once campaigned to “save Ulster from sodomy” and who heckled Pope John Paul II as the “anti-Christ”, the party hails from a tradition that is alien to most people in Great Britain.

The legacy of Paisley, who died last year, was shown when the DUP’s health minister in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive resigned over allegedly homophobic remarks. Jim Wells stepped down on Monday after saying that a child brought up by gay men “is far more likely to be abused and neglected”.

But senior Labour and Tory figures believe they will be able to work constructively with the DUP if the party, which is aiming to win at least nine of Northern Ireland’s 18 MPs, holds the balance of power in a hung parliament.

Labour believes it has nudged ahead in the wooing of the DUP after Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader at Westminster, warned in the Guardian that the party was losing confidence in the Tories over their handling of the SNP. It is an irony of the changing nature of UK politics that the Conservative party is being attacked by the DUP, a party that once saw itself as an anti-establishment force, for acting in an irresponsible way over Scotland.

A series of factors explain why the DUP is now seen by both the Tories and Labour as a reliable partner, though this would involve an arrangement that would be less formal than a coalition agreement involving ministers.

In 2007, Paisley abandoned his rejection of the Northern Ireland political settlement to serve as first minister, with the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness serving as deputy first minister. Paisley took to government with such enthusiasm that he and McGuinness with such enthusiasm they were dubbed the “chuckle brothers”.

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Unease in his Free Presbyterian Church over Paisley’s warm relations with Sinn Féin led to a crisis that led him to lose the leadership of the church in 2008. He also relinquished his leadership of the DUP and his post as first minister in the same year. But his long-serving deputy minister, Peter Robinson, who replaced Paisley as first minister, has remained in government.

Dodds, who was first elected as MP for north Belfast in 2001, is seen as a reliable and solid partner by both Labour and the Tories. The Cambridge-educated barrister, who served as the Northern Ireland finance minister from 2008-9, is a well known figure at Westminster who has established strong relations with the leadership of both parties.

In a Guardian article last month, Dodds set out a series of UK-wide demands that were designed to appeal across the spectrum. Dodds called for defence spending to remain at 2% of GDP, a Nato target championed by the prime minister at last year’s Nato summit in Wales; a review of the bedroom tax; EU treaty changes to give the UK greater control over its borders.

The history of the DUP, as the anti-establishment party of working class loyalists, suggests that it could find common ground with Labour even though some of its views may appear to fit more easily with the right wing of UK politics.

Paisley founded the DUP in 1971 in response to what he regarded as the failure of the Unionist establishment to stand up for the Protestant majority against the civil rights movement, which he described as a front for the IRA. Northern Ireland had by then been governed for 50 years by the Ulster Unionist party (UUP), which was formally linked to the Conservative party. Sir Robin Chichester-Clark, the UUP MP for Derry between 1955 to February 1974 who was brother of the Northern Ireland prime minister James Chichester-Clark, served as a minister in Ted Heath’s government. The UUP, which was unseated from power when direct rule was imposed from London at the height of the Troubles in March 1972, remained the largest Unionist party in Northern Ireland until it was overtaken by the DUP in the 2003 assembly elections.

One figure well-placed to understand the DUP’s relationship with Labour said: “On economic and social policy the DUP was always the working-class Unionist party. The UUP were always essentially a Tory party. People sometimes completely get this mixed up when they talked about Unionist parties in the context of Northern Ireland.

“Many of the core voters of the DUP are people living in poverty, people living on benefits but also people trapped in low-paid jobs. Obviously increasing numbers of middle-class Unionists in recent years have been voting DUP as the only viable, credible alternative. But the root and origins of the party are in working-class loyalist communities, almost the anti-establishment Unionist party.”

The DUP will feel a more natural affinity to Labour because the party has not forgotten the way in which David Cameron sought to revive the old alliance with the UUP by fielding joint candidates in 2010 in Northern Ireland. But then the highly Eurosceptic DUP will be closer to the increasingly Eurosceptic Conservative party on the EU.

Labour and the Tories are both troubled by the views of many DUP members on LGBT rights, highlighted by the resignation of the party’s health minister. But that would have no technical impact on negotiations over the formation of a UK government – LGBT matters are devolved to the Northern Ireland assembly.

There is a degree of frustration among the DUP high command that the resignation of Wells overshadowed Dodds’s Guardian article on Monday. There is also concern within the party leadership that the perceived homophobic nature of Jim Wells’s alleged comments might put off Labour in particular from seeking to woo the DUP if they need its votes to get Ed Miliband into 10 Downing Street.

But a party source stressed that the DUP would be “equidistant” between Labour and the Conservatives in terms of who to support. “People are wrong to put the DUP in a box alongside the Tories and Ukip. We will make up our minds in terms of what is good for the union and for Northern Ireland,” the DUP source said.