The DUP is in danger of a collective nervous breakdown

This is Adam Boulton’s weekly column for Reaction. Subscribe to Reaction here.

I hold no particular brief for Jeffrey Donaldson. In 1998, he denounced me and wrote an official letter of complaint after I reported, based on other sources, that he had walked out on the last day of Good Friday negotiations because he did not like the deal. 

He claimed his departure was for personal reasons. Subsequently, his self-proclaimed principled opposition to the Belfast Agreement emerged as the calling card which led to his defection from the Ulster Unionist Party to the Democratic Unionists, and ultimately to his knighthood and leadership of the DUP.

This year, Sir Jeffrey possessed the guile and political skills to lead the querulous DUP back into the power-sharing executive in Stormont after a two-year-long stand-off which followed Northern Ireland Assembly elections in which the unionist DUP dropped into second place behind pro-United Ireland Sinn Fein. 

Now that he has been effectively expunged from Northern Irish politics, the newly minted political settlement is in jeopardy once again and the fragmented balance of power between the numerous political factions will never be the same.

In a Good Friday shock to match that of twenty-six years ago, Sir Jeffrey, 61, resigned as leader of the DUP last week. He has been arrested and charged with historic offences of rape, gross indecency and indecent assault. He will appear at Newry Magistrates Court on 24 April along with a 57-year-old woman, identified in The Belfast Telegraph as his wife Eleanor, who is charged with aiding and abetting. They are innocent until proven guilty. It is understood that they deny the charges and plan to fight them strenuously. Nonetheless, his God-fearing protestant party took no chances and immediately wiped his image from its website and elected an interim leader.

For the time being, Sir Jeffrey will remain as MP for Lagan Valley, a seat has held since 1997, but it is understood he will stay out of the Westminster parliamentary estate until legal proceedings are concluded. Legal processes take their time, and with a general election only months away, the UK is fast approaching the point when byelections are put in abeyance. 

Should Donaldson resign sooner, a contentious byelection is a certainty. He holds the seat with a 6,499 majority and 43 per cent of the votes. If the unionist vote fragments, the non-sectarian Alliance Party are strong challengers.

Donaldson previously held seats at both Westminster and Stormont. Rules against “double jobbing” have been introduced since. He was elected for Lagan Valley in the last Assembly elections in 2022 but stood down immediately. The DUP nominated his close ally Emma Little-Pengelly in his place. She had previously been an MLA and then MP for Belfast South between 2017 and 2019. In what has been a meteoric political rise, Donaldson appointed the 44 year-old Little-Pengelly to serve as Deputy First Minister alongside Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill in the newly constituted executive government. 

The two women enjoyed a widely praised joint appearance at the White House last month for the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. There appears to be no imminent danger of another collapse of Stormont. Gavin Robinson, the moderate barrister and East Belfast MP chosen as interim DUP leader has described his shock at “the devastating revelation” about Donaldson and has joined O’Neill and Little-Pengelly in stating that their priority must be stability and ensuring that power-sharing continues. 

The next Stormont elections are not due until May 2027 thanks to some deft fudging by the UK government during the suspension period. Fear of an earlier reckoning with the voters may in part explain Donaldson’s volte-face to take the DUP back into Stormont. But the UK-wide vote in the next eight months is unavoidable. 

Power-sharing is likely to be threatened after the UK general election, especially if the DUP loses some of its 8 MPs – as is currently expected. 

In surveys before the Donaldson shock, DUP support was down to 25 per cent from a peak of 33 per cent, 7 points behind Sinn Fein. The party faces losing some votes to Traditional Ulster Voice to its right as well as to the more moderate UUP, Alliance and SDLP. 

Once the results are in across the UK the interim leader may well face a challenge from a hardliner. That in turn could lead to Emma Little-Pengelly being forced to withdraw as first minister, most likely bringing down the executive with her.

The DUP has had the whip hand in Northern Irish politics ever since the Reverend Ian Paisley became the first minister in 2007, helped along by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal and dire need for its support at Westminster. Now they, and perhaps unionism more broadly, are in danger of a collective nervous breakdown. 

Stress is not surprising in such a claustrophobic atmosphere in which everyone knows much about everyone else. For example, mirroring the family backstories of the Sinn Fein leadership North and South, Emma Pengelly-Little is the daughter of Noel Little, a convicted loyalist paramilitary and member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. She is now married to the top civil servant in Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice. Donaldson began his career forty years ago as an aide to Enoch “All political careers end in failure” Powell. He was also in the UDR and belonged to the Orange Order. Sir Jeffrey’s daughter Laura is married to the son of the president of the torival UUP. 

Sir Jeffrey wears a Christian evangelical chi rho fish badge in his lapel. He represented his party in standing for family values and saying no, no, no to abortion, gay marriage and the EU. His fall conjures up the so far unsubstantiated whiff of hypocrisy on the Christian right. Around a third of his erstwhile supporters were also traumatised by his belated decision to largely accept the compromises on Europe painstakingly hammered out by the Sunak government. In spite of a £3.3 billion sweetener from the British taxpayer, Northern Ireland remains in the single market with a trade border with Great Britain. 

In a speech in February, laying the ground for his change of heart, Sir Jeffrey seemed to accept that the status quo was pretty much as good as it was going to get. Northern Ireland’s citizens could be comfortable in their Britishness or their Irishness, he maintained. That was the whole point of the Good Friday agreement which he once rejected. 

What of the big question of Irish Unity? Michelle O’Neill says she expects the question will be asked on both sides of the border within ten years, in what she calls “a decade of opportunity”. Sinn Fein, led by Mary Lou McDonald, is also topping the polls in Ireland’s multi-party system, with an election due there by March next year. 

Readers of the impishly well-informed Slugger O’Toole website woke this week to a lengthy post headlined “Chris Heaton-Harris: Border Poll To Be Called Within A Year”. That was an April Fool: the Northern Ireland secretary has no such early intention. After a series of dud Conservative ministers, Heaton-Harris is a thoughtful and cautiously constructive minister. His approach is likely to continue if there is change of UK Government. Sir Keir Starmer appointed and then promoted the shrewd rising star Peter Kyle out of the shadow job. It is now held by Hilary Benn, one of the most experienced and able of Labour’s potential Cabinet ministers. 

In the short run, Jeffrey Donaldson’s tribulations seriously unsettle political stability in Northern Ireland. In the long run, their indirect consequences may make it easier for UK governments to manage peaceful evolution in the province. A bit like Sir Jeffrey’s various contributions on the Belfast Agreement. 

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