The power brokers who will shape 2018

It's been a year of surprises – but who will make their mark in the months ahead?

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Between the devil and the DUP
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

"It's quite something to stab your prime minister in the back when she's about to do a deal," noted a senior EU figure after Arlene Foster's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) threatened to scupper Britain's messy divorce from Europe in December. But Theresa May's government should have realised that Foster was never going to be a pushover. The DUP leader is "accustomed to pushing her negotiating partners up against a deadline", says the Financial Times. And having spent years in coalition government with unionism's long-term political opponents, Sinn Fein, she has plenty of experience of unlikely political marriages.

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