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What to Know About Jeffrey Donaldson, the Former DUP Leader

In 2007 circumstances modified, and Mr. Donaldson additionally altered course. Following talks in Scotland, the D.U.P.’s veteran founder and chief, the Rev. Ian Paisley, ended his opposition to the Good Friday Agreement, and the D.U.P. went into coalition, in Belfast’s devolved meeting, with Sinn Fein, previously the political wing of the I.R.A. Mr. Donaldson, whereas holding his seat in the London parliament, was additionally a member of the power-sharing Belfast meeting, the place he served for a yr as a junior minister.

In 2021 he grew to become D.U.P. chief after infighting introduced down its two earlier leaders, Arlene Foster and Edwin Poots, inside weeks of one another.

Although Northern Ireland had voted, general, to stay in the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum, Mr. Donaldson, main the D.U.P. from Westminster, aligned unionism with the most hard-line Brexit faction in the British Conservative Party. Led by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this group needed an entire withdrawal from all European Union establishments, together with customs, manufacturing, environmental and veterinary protocols that allowed free commerce and motion throughout the Irish border.

In Ireland, and overseas, a frictionless Irish border was extensively seen as important to preserving the peaceable establishment that adopted the Good Friday Agreement. So when the U.Okay. authorities agreed, underneath heavy strain from the E.U. and the United States, to impose customs and commerce checks between Northern Ireland and the remainder of the United Kingdom, quite than on the Irish border, Mr. Donaldson protested by utilizing the D.U.P.’s power-sharing veto to collapse the devolved authorities in Northern Ireland in 2022.

After two years of Northern Ireland having no functioning authorities, and together with his occasion shedding assist to hard-liners and moderates on both aspect, Mr. Donaldson lastly agreed to revive the meeting in January this yr.

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