JEFFREY DONALDSON has no answers for the working class, the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) has warned ahead of his coronation as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Sir Jeffrey is the only candidate to succeed Edwin Poots as party leader and is expected to be ratified in the post next week.

The CPI branded his selection an “indication of growing instability and confusion within reactionary unionism.”

In a statement, it said that the “privilege-dispensing levers” of unionism granted by British imperialism have been lost and that the DUP is now “scrambling to revive that frozen political landscape.”

“The material self-interests that pushed the British to partition Ireland a century ago and used unionism as the vehicle to bring about partition are the very same self-motivating material interests of British imperialism that is dispensing with unionism today,” it said.

In a keynote speech yesterday, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald told party members that she would meet Sir Jeffrey next week and that Michelle O’Neill will be renominated as deputy first minister.

“The question facing him is whether he is up for real partnership, real powersharing, for political institutions that deliver,” Ms McDonald said of the incoming DUP leader.