Four decades after the Irish Republican Army almost killed her father, Arlene Foster will need to cultivate a partnership with a former IRA commander if she is to end Northern Ireland’s perpetual political crisis as its first female leader.

The 45-year-old lawyer, who also survived an IRA bomb attack on her school bus as a teenager, is to be elected unopposed on Thursday as leader of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to become the British province’s leader-in-waiting.

She will be sworn in in January as First Minister to serve alongside deputy-First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former commander in the IRA, whose 30-year war against British rule ended after a 1998 peace deal.

As head of a right-wing party with eight seats in Britain’s Parliament, Ms Foster is also a potential partner for UK’s ruling Conservative Party.

Ms Foster will take over an executive which has required international mediation to stave off its collapse.