How the DUP lost its way Part three: Jeffrey Donaldson, blood on the carpet Jeffrey Donaldson began his career as an Ulster Unionist and ended it as an independent MP, suspended from the party he had led. He was election agent to Enoch Powell, personal assistant to Jim Molyneaux and, at 22, the youngest member of the 1985 Assembly. As a UUP MP he walked out of the Good Friday Agreement talks in 1998 and spent the following years as the party’s chief internal critic of David Trimble. The public hardness was never the whole story. In 2001, still in the UUP, Donaldson admitted contacts with Sinn Féin through intermediaries and came close to meeting a senior republican before backing out. He joined the DUP in January 2004. Later that year the Rev Harold Good facilitated secret meetings between Donaldson and Martin McGuinness at his home, at a time when DUP policy was not to speak to Sinn Féin. One internal assessment described him as liberal in the early 1990s and “less easy to pin down” thereafter. Donaldson became DUP leader on 30 June 2021. He inherited a party that had removed two leaders in under two months, and a First Minister, Paul Givan, whose appointment he had opposed. Givan stayed, sustained by colleagues whose objections had helped bring Edwin Poots down. It recalled the Interflora episode of BBC Two’s Blood on the Carpet: members help to overthrow a leadership, only to find its successors pursuing the same policies. In August a Belfast Telegraph/LucidTalk poll put the DUP on 13%, behind the UUP on 16% and the TUV on 14%. Something had to change. Donaldson steered the party towards a more uncompromising line on Brexit, and on Ulster Day unionist leaders declared opposition to the Protocol an “unalterable position”. The DUP recovered to 18% by November, then slipped to 17%, within the margin of error, in LucidTalk’s January 2022 poll. Seats remained vulnerable, and the party’s internal politics soon followed the polls. Donaldson said he would return to the Assembly, which left three figures competing for Lagan Valley, where the DUP held two seats. Some read the move as aimed at Poots. Poots sought South Down, but party officers chose Diane Forsythe; his camp claimed a transfer agreement, which the party denied. There was also talk of Christopher Stalford facing deselection, although no plan was established. Givan resigned on 3 February 2022, bringing down the Executive. On 18 February Sammy Wilson was heckled at an anti-Protocol rally in Markethill. The anger was fuelled by a BBC Radio Ulster report that morning that senior DUP figures were willing to consider a “best of both worlds” scenario, which critics took as proof that the party was softening on the Irish Sea border. TUV leader Jim Allister had spent days accusing the DUP of precisely that. When Allister appealed for Wilson to be heard, Wilson thanked him and insisted, “We are on the same side.” Christopher Stalford died the following day. At the request of his family, Poots was co-opted to fill the vacancy. In May 2022 the DUP won 21.3% of first-preference votes, down from 28.1% in 2017. The fall reflected a period of internal warfare and accusations that the party had deserted the unionist base, but after the autumn’s polling it still counted as a recovery. Donaldson was elected to the Assembly in Lagan Valley but kept his Westminster seat, and Emma Little-Pengelly took his place by co-option. The Windsor Framework did not end the boycott, because the DUP judged it too weak. Critics argued that it was old wine in new bottles: the Stormont Brake required cross-community support and was not a general veto, EU goods rules continued to apply, and checks on goods moving within the UK remained. DUP MPs voted against the Stormont Brake regulations in March 2023. In May the party held 122 council seats on 23.3%, while Sinn Féin became the largest party on councils. (continues on next post)