Do we like them?

Do we like Emma Little-Pengelly?

Our score: 4 out of 10. Little confirmed harm in her own words, but the record on LGBTQ+ issues is unclear, and a stack of recent rows keeps it at a four.

Emma Little-Pengelly is a barrister turned DUP politician who is now Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, sharing the top job with Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill. She got into the Assembly by being co-opted to replace Jeffrey Donaldson after the 2022 election, and she took flak for having no direct electoral mandate for the role. Her answer was that she couldn't change the circumstances of her position and wanted to get on with the big issues.

The latest blow-up is Drumcree. After the Parades Commission allowed an Orange Order parade down the Garvaghy Road, thousands of protesters blocked it, and O'Neill joined them. In the Assembly, Little-Pengelly accused O'Neill of breaking the law and encouraging others to do so, calling it a “total abdication of leadership”. O'Neill said she attended as a representative of the demonstrators and Sinn Féin vice president, not as First Minister.

The fallout has been serious. DUP leader Gavin Robinson stopped short of pulling her out of the Executive, which would force O'Neill out too, but said she'd no longer take part in joint engagements with O'Neill. Reports say that has already scuppered a joint trip and a planned meeting with the Irish President, and one DUP MP is publicly pushing for a harder line. Where you land depends on whether you see this as a stand on the rule of law or as stoking a standoff.

On the harm check, the honest answer is that the record is thin. In 2019 Westminster backed same-sex marriage and an abortion-rights amendment for Northern Ireland, and the DUP opposed both; the report we read doesn't say how she personally voted, so we can't pin that on her. We also found no words from her on trans rights, migrants or climate, so there's no slide into grievance or conspiracy that we could confirm.

Over the summer she faced a separate row. The Belfast Telegraph reported a claim that she had told a woman that Jeffrey Donaldson was a danger; her solicitors said she appeared to have been misrepresented, and she said she saw nothing to suggest it. Opponents including O'Neill demanded answers; that remains a dispute between her and her critics, not something any court has decided about her.

We couldn't open good-stuff reporting beyond a note that she has supported sporting clubs across communities, GAA included, so we've left that out of the file. The Wimbledon royal box trip, which drew a cost row from the Opposition, couldn't be opened or dated either, so we've left it out too. That's the gap here: plenty of political rows, very little on the personal record.