Jeffrey Donaldson destroyed David Trimble. Is he about to do the same to himself?

On April 10th, 1998, just hours before the Ulster Unionist Party endorsed the Belfast Agreement, Jeffrey Donaldson left the party’s negotiating team. It was a huge blow for David Trimble, albeit not a fatal one at that moment.

Donaldson’s concerns about decommissioning, the early release of paramilitary prisoners, the establishment of a commission on the future of policing and the prospect of the Royal Ulster Constabulary being disbanded were widely shared across the UUP, even amongst those who continued to support Trimble. Had he remained on board it is likely that unionist support for the Agreement in the referendum a few weeks later would have been greater than it was and that the UUP would have performed better in the elections to the new assembly in June. Both of those outcomes would have strengthened Trimble’s position and provided him with the extra clout he needed over the next few years.

Donaldson became a key player in the unionist NO campaign (which included electoral rivals of the UUP) during the referendum and afterward established himself as leader of a rebel faction within the party, hounding Trimble at every step, forcing regular meetings of the party’s governing council and ensuring that Trimble’s already weakened authority was further reduced. But at no point during that civil war did he ever rally the numbers to topple and replace him.

In November 2003, shortly after his election as an MLA, Donaldson and Arlene Foster resigned from the UUP and, a few weeks later, defected to the DUP. Whether or not it was a choreography that had been arranged with the DUP prior to the elections I don’t know (although there is enough evidence to suggest there had been some nod-and-a-wink conversations before November), but it was a crushing moment for Trimble and the party.

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Today it is Donaldson who faces the sort of decision that Trimble had to make in April 1998: trying to find a way of persuading his party to accept a deal that restores devolution (this time with Sinn Féin as largest party and First Minister) and doesn’t drive former voters from the DUP in the numbers that drifted from the UUP to the DUP after 1998. He also has to avoid splitting his party the way he split the UUP and prevent the civil war that transformed the UUP into a basket case.

Some people have spoken of Donaldson facing his “Trimble moment”, but I think it’s actually more complicated than that. In 1998 Sinn Féin was not the largest party and unionism was still polling over 50 per cent. And while the DUP may have claimed the Belfast Agreement was a “one-way ticket to a united Ireland” (it clearly wasn’t) that is why it was able to cut its own bespoke deal with Sinn Féin in 2007 and keep the show on the road for almost a decade. Crucially, though, while Northern Ireland retained its “place apart” status, as it had been since 1921, it was a place apart within the United Kingdom.

There is a tendency in some unionist/loyalist circles, particularly the ones that backed Brexit, to blame the Irish, especially Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney

At the moment, thanks to the original Northern Ireland Protocol in 2019/20 and its successor, the Windsor Framework, Northern Ireland is neither fully part of the UK nor fully part of the EU. The place apart is now a constitutional granny flat, a place that makes most of unionism feel extremely uncomfortable. What unsettles it most, of course, is that this new hybrid status has been forced upon it by a UK government (a succession of them, in fact), rather than by Ireland or the EU.

There is a tendency in some unionist/loyalist circles, particularly the ones that backed Brexit, to blame the Irish, especially Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney, along with the EU Commission, for acting in bad faith since 2016. They might be better asking themselves why, if that accusation carries weight, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak chose to bypass unionist interests in favour of other interests.

The pre-Christmas talks between the main Northern Ireland parties were predicated on the expectation that the DUP was finally ready to do a deal. So ready, indeed, that the UK government was offering £3.3bn to an incoming executive. But on the Tuesday before Christmas, it became clear that the DUP wasn’t ready to deal. It still wanted more guarantees from the government, including some sort of legislative safeguard that underpinned NI’s position within the UK.

What will it take for Donaldson to ask his party to make the call on restoration? I have no doubt that he wants devolution restored, by the way; not least because without it unionism doesn’t have an institutional power base in Northern Ireland. He knows, too, that a return to some form of direct rule will do no favours for the DUP or unionism generally and it certainly won’t prevent the implementation of the Windsor Framework or EU law in some specific areas.

Trimble had to make a deal on power-sharing with Sinn Féin and closer Anglo/Irish institutional relationships. Donaldson has to make one on the granny flat. Has he the courage to make it? Does he think there is still more to be squeezed from Rishi Sunak, or even from Labour after a general election due in 2024? Will it lead to a realignment of unionism? Will losing an internal vote mean his resignation and a realignment anyway?

When he and others left the UUP for the DUP it led to a realignment, especially of voters abandoning the UUP. What would a realignment look like this time? Has the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV – a potentially vote-winning rival on his right) the capacity to do to the DUP what the DUP did to the UUP? Could unionism as we know it just collapse if he mistimes the inevitable decision?

All of this boils down to what Donaldson does next: and he won’t be allowed to drag the decision out much longer. In essence, he destroyed Trimble and the UUP. Is he about to do something similar to himself and the DUP, or can he pull off a deal that saves the DUP and devolution and also strengthens the union. It’s a huge challenge for him. The consequences, either way, are also huge.

Alex Kane is a commentator based in Belfast. He was formerly director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party