Jeffrey Donaldson’s David Trimble moment is approaching

The DUP has a problem: some of its members, key players among them, are endangering the party’s electoral chances and the union itself. We know this to be true because Jeffrey Donaldson said so in a recent email to party members which was, as he obviously knew it would be, leaked to a newspaper within hours of him pressing the send button on his computer.

Donaldson has another problem: he has to make a call on whether the DUP should return to the Assembly. It is a call he has been putting off for the 18 months since he withdrew the First Minister in February 2022 and collapsed the assembly. He was waiting: for the outcome of a number of legal cases brought by unionist colleagues on the constitutional validity of the Northern Ireland Protocol; for the UK government and EU to agree some changes to the protocol; and for Rishi Sunak to respond to an 18-page raft of concerns the DUP dumped on his desk a few weeks ago.

He was also waiting for the outcome of local government elections three months ago (which were not as bad as he first feared).

The legal route did not deliver for unionism. Indeed it actually made matters worse, confirming the “place apart” status of Northern Ireland. The UK and EU agreed a new arrangement, the Windsor Framework, which did not really address the DUP’s core concerns but still sailed through parliament with large majorities. It is unlikely that Sunak, who has enough other problems on his plate between now and a looming general election, will be able to hand Donaldson the sort of victory required to silence his party critics.

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All of which means the DUP has to decide what to do. A return to the assembly would, inevitably, involve a compromise because the party will not get everything it wants. But history suggests the DUP is fairly good at compromise, having managed quite a few hop-skip-and-a-jump shifts of position since 2003. But if it does not opt for devolution then it risks paving the way to some kind of hybrid concoction which isn’t direct rule, or joint authority, or the present continuing spin-of-the-wheel insouciance from the Northern Secretary. It would, instead, be the Star Trek option: “It’s government, Jim, but not as we know it.”

Donaldson’s email confirmed what most of us have known for some time: that there is an internal DUP debate about what to do next. I suspect his team – which leans towards devolution (and wasn’t helped by Leo Varadkar’s recent “Plan B” comments in Belfast about what happens if devolution is not restored) – has done the headcount of MLAs, MPs, councillors, party officers and party executive and reckoned it has a majority. How big that majority is I don’t know, let alone how firm it would remain during a public vote. But Donaldson has previous experience of these headcount situations, having once been the sharpest UUP thorn in David Trimble’s flesh.

When does the crunch point come? As soon as he receives the response from Rishi Sunak to the concerns and proposals document he handed him before the summer break. That response will, I think, come very soon. An investment conference is due in Northern Ireland in early September, and there will be pressure to confirm where the DUP stands and how likely a rebooting of the Assembly is.

So Donaldson will have to table something of significance to his party in a matter of weeks, running the risk of a return to the near-meltdown that convulsed it in the spring/summer of 2021, when it had three leaders in as many months. For now, though, he will be focused on five factors.

Defections: Probably containable because Jim Allister, the TUV leader and main electoral rival, is a one-man-band who quite likes that role. He left the DUP in March 2007 over its decision to enter government with Sinn Féin yet not one DUP MLA or MP followed him. It was a huge decision for the DUP, considering its previous opposition to the Belfast Agreement and Sinn Féin, but it saw off all internal opposition.

A coup/split: The supposed “big beasts” he believes are undermining him would be hard pushed to get the support to replace him, and there really is not anyone else who could rally the factions around them. The fear of a catastrophic party-destroying split will also stay the hand of most of his enemies.

Election: A general election is due before January 2025. That gives a return-to-the-Assembly decision a year to bed down.

Loyalist paramilitary response: Mainstream loyalism tends not to move unless it has some sort of cover from mainstream unionism (1974 and 1998). It won’t have that this time.

Unionist “arrangement”: If the DUP says yes to returning, then the UUP and one of the two independent unionist MLAs would probably support it. The DUP should keep malcontents down to three or four, which means Donaldson would have the support of 32 of the 37 unionist MLAs.

Donaldson now faces a kind of Trimble moment. If he is to succeed he must win the internal/external debate that devolution, albeit imperfect, is preferable to the possible alternatives. Trimble almost lost the internal unionist referendum debate in 1998 because he seemed at times indifferent to the Belfast Agreement. Crucially, Donaldson also knows that increasing numbers of unionists have no emotional or political attachment to the Assembly or its survival.

Getting a rescue deal in the next few weeks is one thing, and likely to happen. Getting a deal that keeps unionism on board in the long term is another matter altogether: and certainly the one upon which his legacy will be judged.