As the DUP oils the party machine for one more election, it is unlikely to have time to reflect on what happened during this very month, 19 years ago. October 2003 provided a spectacular example of how unintended consequences can have a seismic impact on the political landscape of Northern Ireland.

At that time procrastination was the policy of the IRA. By failing to deliver on weapons decommissioning on October 21, 2003, republicans undermined the position of David Trimble and his Ulster Unionist party. It forced them to withdraw from power-sharing, with their tail between their legs. In the November Assembly elections that followed, the DUP mercilessly attacked Trimble as a ‘soft touch’ unionist. As a result of the attrition, for the first time, Ian Paisley’s party won more Stormont seats than their UUP rivals. 

A trend was set. Appropriating many of Trimble’s policies, the DUP became the main voice of unionism, courtesy of the republican movement.

19 years on, the DUP, led by Jeffrey Donaldson, is caught in the headlights. Burdened by paranoia over the threat from their right posed by Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice party, the DUP has created the circumstances to trigger fresh elections to what is currently a mothballed parliament.  

The behaviour is part of a pattern. Since Brexit, DUP intransigence is the gift that keeps on giving, boosting Sinn Féin’s support base, south and north. The DUP stance also signals an uncomfortable truth to the British and Irish governments, the European Commission and the Biden administration in Washington. Under Jeffrey Donaldson, the main voice of unionism, the DUP is badly in need of a dig-out because it is struggling to provide any meaningful evidence that it is able to help itself.

Of the five main Northern Ireland parties, the DUP was the only one that advocated leaving the European Union in the 2016 Brexit Referendum campaign. On Thursday, it alone was on the opposite side to the Ulster Unionist party, as well as Alliance, the SDLP and Sinn Féin, blocking efforts to resume devolved government in Northern Ireland. The DUP stance leaves the British government on course to trigger fresh Assembly elections.

Six years ago, when the DUP took part in what was a low-level campaign before the Brexit Referendum, it gave no indication to the electorate that devolved government on-hold might follow. Such a scenario wasn’t part of the calculations for the No Victory outcome that many DUP stalwarts didn’t envisage happening.  

In the out-workings of the British government’s decision to leave the EU, the DUP had no influence on the deal, Northern Ireland protocol included, that Boris Johnson struck with Brussels. “Get Brexit done” was his concern – the details of the agreement didn’t overconcern him.

The consequences of Brexit, the unexpected contagion, had a role in unseating the three most recent British prime ministers – May, Johnson and Truss.  It is no surprise that Northern Ireland, with its unique and fragile model of devolved power-sharing should also struggle with the burden of an unquantifiable load. 

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Is Jeffrey Donaldson the right fit for a role on centre stage?  I’ve known him for more than twenty years. First as the Ulster Unionist who had withdrawn from the party delegation, as it negotiated the final details of the Good Friday Agreement. Then, with Arlene Foster and others, who challenged David Trimble for participating in power-sharing that included Sinn Féin, until they upped sticks and defected to the DUP.

Peter Robinson, the party’s chief strategist, quickly gave him a role in the DUP’s inner circle. But when the party entered power-sharing with Sinn Féin at Stormont in 2007, Donaldson continued to operate on the London beat. Even though he was elected party leader in June 2021, Westminster, not Belfast, continues to be his place of work.

Donaldson doesn’t have the disposition to suggest that he is a hardliner. He is courteous by nature. On many occasions, he changed plans to facilitate last-minute RTÉ requests for interviews. He regularly accepts speaking engagements at events in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland and south of the border.

He will turn 60 in December. There is no evidence to back up the theory, whispered by a minority, that Donaldson is against the idea of being deputy first minister, alongside a Catholic first minister, Michelle Ó Neill.  

It is a different matter as to whether the DUP will commit itself to the deputy first minister role, in a mandatory coalition model, where Sinn Féin provides the first minister nominee. That issue cuts deep into where the DUP sees its medium-term future. Some within the party wonder if the best conditions for regrouping and rebuilding might come during a period on opposition benches – that’s the kind of argument that would lead to a major overhaul of the Good Friday Agreement.

There is the very obvious question about Jeffrey Donaldson himself. So often on the move, he has no history of sitting behind a desk, making difficult policy decisions and sticking to them or standing at a dispatch box and defending them. As a Westminster MP, he was familiar with the arrangements that saw funding from Britain, channelled through the DUP, to fund pro-Brexit publicity at a crucial time in the Brexit campaign. But there was no evidence that he anticipated the calamity that would follow.

Edwin Poots wasn’t in post for long enough for his qualities as a party leader to be assessed. But all the other pre-Donaldson occupants of the post, Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster, showed an aptitude and a steel for the challenge. Regarding Jeffrey, as yet, he is untested and unproven as boss.

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In fresh Assembly elections, the DUP’s priority would be to claw back support from the Traditional Unionist Voice party. Jim Allister’s organisation won 7.6 per cent of the first preference vote but miraculously from a DUP perspective, it took just one of the 90 seats. Success would involve regaining seats lost (to the Alliance party) in places like Strangford and North Antrim and keeping Jim Allister as the sole TUV representative while eroding his party’s vote share.

Sinn Fein will pull out all the stops to retain its position as the largest party, with the greatest number of Assembly members, including entitlement to the First Minister role. Alliance will seek to continue its pattern of growth. The Ulster Unionists, SDLP and Green Party will strive to halt the reduction in space caused by the boxing match between the two heavyweights.

When Northern Ireland is preoccupied with a new Assembly contest, efforts to find an acceptable compromise between London and Brussels on the Northern Ireland protocol are likely to be put on hold. The British government and the European Commission have no shortage of challenges requiring attention. Pragmatism would suggest that the sensible strategy is to see what emerges from the election and then re-engage on the protocol impasse.

In the land never short of deadlines and missed deadlines, the next significant staging post may be Easter 2023, the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

There is a logic to Rishi Sunak’s new administration getting involved in Protocol talks with European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, early next year. Both groupings could do with a positive outcome. It would play well into the narrative and timeframe of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement being a celebration of an incomplete but internationally-recognised peace process.  

In the days immediately after Queen Elizabeth’s passing, the DUP and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, were on the receiving end of an unexpected slight. On a visit to Northern Ireland, the grieving eldest son of the deceased monarch, had warm interactions with two Sinn Féin representatives, Michelle O’ Neill and Alex Maskey. The contact with the DUP leader and privy council member, Sir Jeffrey, was perfunctory. The contrast, captured on camera, was all the more remarkable given that months before, at the last minute, Mary Lou Mc Donald, the Sinn Fein president and Michelle O’Neill, had pulled out of a planned meeting with Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at very short notice. 

If the stalemate at Stormont continues in the medium-term, Northern Ireland’s reputation for political dysfunction will grow and with it, Jeffrey Donaldson’s fondness for being in motion rather than control.  

DUP in ‘Our Way or No Way mode’ is a bells and whistles growth promoter for Sinn Féin and talk of a united Ireland.  Never mind the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ malarkey. Through Sinn Féin eyes, it’s a case of my enemy being my best friend.