Northern Ireland power-sharing leader keeps party backing despite shock British election loss

NIreland leader supported despite election loss

DUBLIN — The leader of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, Peter Robinson, has received the united support of his own party’s lawmakers despite his surprise loss last week in the British parliamentary election.

Robinson leads Northern Ireland’s major Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, and serves as first minister of the province’s Catholic-Protestant government.

His continued leadership has fallen into doubt because he failed to win re-election as the British lawmaker for Protestant east Belfast, his power base since 1979. Robinson was the only Democratic Unionist to lose his seat in Thursday’s election.

But the Democratic Unionists say its lawmakers in the Northern Ireland Assembly have voiced unified support for their leader at a Belfast meeting Monday.