Jeffrey Donaldson

Sir Jeffrey Mark Donaldson (born 7 December 1962) is a British politician who has served as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) since June 2021.

Two of Donaldson's cousins were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army while serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary: Sam Donaldson was killed in 1970 and Alex Donaldson, a Chief Inspector, died in a mortar attack on a Newry police station in 1985.

Donaldson served with the Kilkeel company of the 3rd Battalion Ulster Defence Regiment (3 UDR), where he was later promoted to corporal.

Donaldson worked as an insurance broker in the 1980s.

From 1982 to 1984 he was the constituency agent for the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell, managing Powell's successful re-election campaigns in 1983 and 1986.

He was also the campaign manager for the UUP MP Enoch Powell's successful re-election campaigns in 1983 and 1986.

In October 1985, at the age of 22, following the death of Raymond McCullough, Donaldson was elected with a large majority in a by-election to the Northern Ireland Assembly to represent South Down.

In April 1986 Donaldson partook in a unionist demonstration attempting to blockade a conference of the Ulster Teachers' Union held in Newcastle, County Down, in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Demonstrators blocked teachers' cars and scuffled with the police; at one point protestors broke through police lines and attacked Education Minister Brian Mawhinney's car with flag poles.

After further violence arrests were made.

Donaldson told reporters afterward "What we're saying to Brian Mawhinney here today is that he may think that he is an Ulsterman but the people of Ulster... want no part of a man who has betrayed the people of Ulster."

Mawhinney labelled the protestors "thugs".

In June that year after Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Tom King ordered the dissolution the Assembly, Donaldson was one of twenty-one unionist representatives who refused to leave the chamber at Stormont and was eventually physically removed from the building by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

In 1996 he was first-placed candidate on the UUP list for the Northern Ireland Forum elections, virtually guaranteeing him a seat.

Donaldson, by this time serving as Assistant Grand Master of the Orange Order, was a prominent figure in the ongoing Drumcree conflict over a yearly loyalist parade in the town of Portadown.

He justified unionist demonstrators cutting off Belfast International Airport by saying "in a democracy people have the right to protest and unfortunately some people get inconvenienced".

He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lagan Valley since 1997, and leader of the DUP in the UK House of Commons since 2019.

As of 2024, he is Northern Ireland's longest-serving MP.

Donaldson was a member of the Orange Order and served in the Ulster Defence Regiment during the Troubles.

He was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate for Lagan Valley at the 1997 general election, and was elected as an MP to the House of Commons.

He then worked as personal assistant to the UUP leader James Molyneaux until Molyneaux retired from politics in 1997.

This led to his selection in January 1997 as a candidate for the Westminster Parliament; he was elected at the 1997 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lagan Valley constituency, succeeding James Molyneaux.

At that time he was tipped as a potential future leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Donaldson stated in Richard English's book, Armed Struggle, that because of a "deep sense of injustice that I felt had been perpetrated against my people and specifically against my family", he joined both the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Ulster Unionist Party at the age of 18 to oppose the IRA both militarily and politically.

Donaldson is known for his opposition to UUP leader David Trimble's support of the Good Friday Agreement during the Northern Ireland peace process, especially from 1998 to 2003.

In 1998, Donaldson was in the Ulster Unionist Party's negotiating team for the Good Friday Agreement.

However, on the morning of the day the agreement was concluded on 10 April 1998, Donaldson walked out of the delegation.

He rejected some of the arrangements, notably the lack of a link between Sinn Féin's admittance to government and IRA decommissioning.

Donaldson engineered several party council meetings in protest against David Trimble's policies.

He simultaneously represented the same constituency as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2003 to 2010.

In 2003, Donaldson resigned from the UUP, becoming a member of the DUP in the following year.

The council, however, backed Trimble's leadership, and on 23 June 2003, along with fellow MPs David Burnside and Martin Smyth, Donaldson resigned the Ulster Unionist whip at Westminster.

Donaldson served in the Northern Ireland Executive from 2008 to 2009 as a Junior Minister for First Minister Peter Robinson.

After Nigel Dodds lost his seat at the 2019 general election, Donaldson became the DUP Westminster leader.

He was a candidate in the May 2021 Democratic Unionist Party leadership election, losing to Edwin Poots.

After Poots resigned the following month, Donaldson was elected unopposed to succeed Poots in the June DUP leadership election; he was confirmed in the post by the party's ruling executive on 30 June.

He was once again elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 2022 Assembly election, but he subsequently chose to remain as a Westminster MP and not take up his seat.

Donaldson was born in Kilkeel, County Down, in Northern Ireland, where he was the oldest of five boys and three girls.

He attended Kilkeel High School, where he excelled at debating, then Castlereagh College.

At the age of sixteen he joined the Orange Order, and then the Ulster Unionist Party's Young Unionists.