The DUP thread

[seafoid]

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/the-dups-darkest-hour-exposure-of-jeffrey-donaldsons-double-life-leaves-party-in-deep-crisis/a/157643299.html

The party has been running to stand still. It was on just 18pc in our last poll in April – three points below its 2022 Assembly performance, which itself was dire. Factor in Donaldson's conviction and everything that has emerged since and the outlook is grim.

The TUV will be merciless. Expect Jim Allister to be on rinse and repeat about the 'dud Donaldson deal' for the next 10 months. The claim that spooks possibly blackmailed the former DUP leader into agreeing to restore devolution is a powerful one that will resonate with a chunk of unionist grassroots.


The UUP is on trickier territory with the Donaldson story given that he was an elected representative for the party almost as long as he was for the DUP. However, it is the latter party with which he served most recently and is associated with in the public mind.

UUP leader Jon Burrows hasn't opted for point-scoring against his bigger rival. He is focusing on the need to change the law to stop Donaldson accessing his huge taxpayer-funded pension.

UUP leader Jon Burrows
UUP leader Jon Burrows © PA
He has the advantage of being new to politics, and he's stressing that. The UUP leader told a recent party meeting that his would be a zero tolerance approach and "anyone acting dishonourably is for the door".

The DUP's worst fear will be that the trial and its aftermath has cemented something psychologically with voters – the idea of a party permanently linked to scandal, crisis and decline.

The story no longer concerns just one man. Rather, it's about a political organisation that looks weighed down by questions and controversies.

[JPGJOHNNYG]

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/the-dups-darkest-hour-exposure-of-jeffrey-donaldsons-double-life-leaves-party-in-deep-crisis/a/157643299.html

The party has been running to stand still. It was on just 18pc in our last poll in April – three points below its 2022 Assembly performance, which itself was dire. Factor in Donaldson's conviction and everything that has emerged since and the outlook is grim.

The TUV will be merciless. Expect Jim Allister to be on rinse and repeat about the 'dud Donaldson deal' for the next 10 months. The claim that spooks possibly blackmailed the former DUP leader into agreeing to restore devolution is a powerful one that will resonate with a chunk of unionist grassroots.


The UUP is on trickier territory with the Donaldson story given that he was an elected representative for the party almost as long as he was for the DUP. However, it is the latter party with which he served most recently and is associated with in the public mind.

UUP leader Jon Burrows hasn't opted for point-scoring against his bigger rival. He is focusing on the need to change the law to stop Donaldson accessing his huge taxpayer-funded pension.

UUP leader Jon Burrows
UUP leader Jon Burrows © PA
He has the advantage of being new to politics, and he's stressing that. The UUP leader told a recent party meeting that his would be a zero tolerance approach and "anyone acting dishonourably is for the door".

The DUP's worst fear will be that the trial and its aftermath has cemented something psychologically with voters – the idea of a party permanently linked to scandal, crisis and decline.

The story no longer concerns just one man. Rather, it's about a political organisation that looks weighed down by questions and controversies.

Donaldson looking to appeal which is bad bad news for DUP as it will just keep the whole episode fresh in people's heads for next yrs elections

[Milltown Row2]

If he wins an appeal will he be brought back into the DUP family again?

[imtommygunn]

What grounds can he appeal on?

[seafoid]

What grounds can he appeal on?

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/paedophile-ex-dup-leader-jeffrey-donaldson-expected-to-appeal-child-abuse-and-rape-convictions/a/157939558.html

Facing the prospect of spending at least the next decade behind bars, the former Lagan Valley MP is preparing to challenge the jury's guilty findings.
The shamed politician has 28 days to make an application for leave to appeal.
The grounds for it are likely to centre around the decision not to run his trial on child abuse charges separate from the trial of the facts involving his wife Eleanor Donaldson who was deemed medically unfit to participate.
She was found to have aided and abetted her husband's crimes.
On May 21, five days before the Donaldsons' trial in Newry began, Judge Paul Ramsay ruled they would be heard "simultaneously".
Any appeal from Donaldson is expected to challenge this ruling as it led to their trials running together and Eleanor Donaldson's police interviews being played to the jury.
 
These included her recalling finding her husband alone in a room with one of his teenage victims and remarking: "I just sort of remember just looking at him and saying, 'What are you doing?'"
Eleanor also told detectives: "In the years that came after that, I never had any cause for concern ever, I never felt that apart from thinking that that was strange and what was that about and I asked Jeffrey about it and he just dismissed it.
"I never had any other feeling that anything was wrong."
Because Eleanor was deemed medically unfit to stand trial, Donaldson's defence team did not have the opportunity to question her about the statements she made to police following their arrest in 2024.
What did the PSNI know, and when did they know it? Was any such information considered a matter of national security, and were these concerns communicated to the Northern Ireland Office?

There was also a direction to the jury that Eleanor's statements could not be used by them to determine her husband's guilt. Donaldson is likely to argue that this prejudiced his case as "what was heard by the jury could not be unheard".
The convicted child rapist is also understood to be examining Judge Paul Ramsay's charge to the jury at the close of the trial and whether that presents potential for grounds for appeal.
Meanwhile, Independent MLA Doug Beattie has called for the Police Ombudsman to investigate what the PSNI knew about Donaldson.
The former Lagan Valley MP was convicted of 18 child sex abuse charges, including one charge of rape against two women when they were children.

[DaleCooper]

If he wins an appeal will he be brought back into the DUP family again?

No. Just the LOL

[seafoid]

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorials/2026/06/29/the-irish-times-view-on-donaldson-revelations-a-gathering-storm-for-dup/

The spotlight now falls on the many senior colleagues who were, it appears, aware of his reckless and politically perilous behaviour over the course of his career, and who must account for why they still saw fit to elect him leader. The fact that Donaldson exploited the structures of evangelical Christianity as an alternative justice system to evade the law should also spur serious self-examination among the members of those communities.
Faced with a gathering storm, the DUP has announced an independent review. That seems unlikely to staunch the wounds. With Assembly and local elections less than a year away, a reordering of power within unionism may now be in prospect. And perhaps also a version of the broader reckoning that shook Irish Catholic nationalism in the 1990s, when the chasm between pious public rhetoric and private reality finally proved no longer tenable.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Maybe seafoid; but you'd imagine most DUPers will move toward TUV rather than UUP or Alliance.

Whether lone ranger Jim (and his sidekick Timto) have enough party members who can spell their own name correctly in the application forms is another matter.

[NAG1]

Maybe seafoid; but you'd imagine most DUPers will move toward TUV rather than UUP or Alliance.

Whether lone ranger Jim (and his sidekick Timto) have enough party members who can spell their own name correctly in the application forms is another matter.

Hopefully it is a significant shift, TUV are even less capable than the DUP and if they gut each other further splits down the Unionist vote.
Also with the way TUV have gone after the DUP on this issue lately the chances of any pacts might be quickly disappearing.

[playwiththewind1st]

It will probably boil down to whom Allister hates more, come the beginning of May 2027 - the DUP, or "Sinn Féin / IRA".

Hard to call at the minute, but he always hates someone else, at any given time.

Allister is 73 now & he can't go on forever. If he was to go, at some stage, is it conceivable that the TUV will simply fade away?

[imtommygunn]

The level of competence in the TUV is not good. The DUP for all that they are have plenty more than competent in their ranks. (well a bit more...).

Allister doing what he's doing is probably a disaster for unionism.

[quit yo jibbajabba]

Once again we sit back and watch the enemy defeat itself 😎🤓

[playwiththewind1st]

Wallace Thompson, a founding member of the DUP, said he thinks Ian Paisley would be "turning in his grave" at the revelations about the "immoral" life that Donaldson lived.

The former DUP special advisor said the party was founded upon "high moral standards" and that it will now be a "monumental task" for it to deal with the fallout.

You just have to shake your head in sheer disbelief that anyone can sit with a straight face & claim that the DUP ever had "high moral standards".

[imtommygunn]

Cough junior cough 

It's a bit like brexit this. The best thing any nationalist party can do is sit back and say nothing.

[Smokin Joe]

It will probably boil down to whom Allister hates more, come the beginning of May 2027 - the DUP, or "Sinn Féin / IRA".

Hard to call at the minute, but he always hates someone else, at any given time.

Allister is 73 now & he can't go on forever. If he was to go, at some stage, is it conceivable that the TUV will simply fade away?

The same thing was said about Paisley 30 years ago.  There always appears to be someone else coming up, and even if the TUV does fade away then Bryson (or someone like him) will set up a new 3 letter acronym party and they'll take up the space that Paisley and then Allister has taken.

The world just keeps spinning.