Jeffrey Donaldson facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Right Honourable Sir Jeffrey Donaldson
Official portrait, 2017
Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party
In office 30 June 2021 – 29 March 2024
Deputy	Paula Bradley Gavin Robinson
Preceded by	Edwin Poots
Succeeded by	Gavin Robinson
Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons
In office 17 December 2019 – 29 March 2024
Leader	Arlene Foster Edwin Poots Himself
Preceded by	Nigel Dodds
Succeeded by	Gavin Robinson
Democratic Unionist Party Chief Whip in the House of Commons
In office 8 May 2015 – 17 December 2019
Leader	Nigel Dodds
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Sammy Wilson
Junior Minister at the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister
In office 26 February 2008 – 1 July 2009 Serving with Gerry Kelly
Preceded by	Ian Paisley Jr
Succeeded by	Robin Newton
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Lagan Valley
In office 26 November 2003 – 14 June 2010
Preceded by	Patrick Roche
Succeeded by	Paul Givan
Member of Parliament for Lagan Valley
In office 1 May 1997 – 30 May 2024
Preceded by	Sir James Molyneaux
Succeeded by	Sorcha Eastwood
Member of Lisburn City Council
In office 5 May 2005 – 5 May 2011
Preceded by	Thomas Archer
Succeeded by	Alan Carlisle
Constituency	Lisburn Town South
Member of the Northern Ireland Forum for Lagan Valley
In office 30 May 1996 – 25 April 1998
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for South Down
In office 17 October 1985 – 1986
Preceded by	Raymond McCullough
Succeeded by	Assembly dissolved
Personal details
Born	(1962-12-07) 7 December 1962 (age 62) Kilkeel, Northern Ireland
Nationality	British
Political party	Democratic Unionist Party (suspended)
Other political affiliations	Ulster Unionist Party (until 2003)
Spouse	Eleanor Mary Elizabeth Cousins ​ (m. 1987)​
Children	2
Alma mater	Castlereagh College
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch/service	British Army
Rank	Corporal
Unit	Ulster Defence Regiment

Sir Jeffrey Mark Donaldson (born 7 December 1962) is a British former politician, who served as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 2021 to 2024, and leader of the DUP in the UK House of Commons from 2019 to 2024. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lagan Valley from 1997 to 2024.

Donaldson was a member of the Orange Order and served in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) during the Troubles. He was also the campaign manager for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP Enoch Powell's successful re-election campaigns in 1983 and 1986. He was the UUP candidate for Lagan Valley at the 1997 general election, and was elected as an MP to the House of Commons. He simultaneously represented the same constituency as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2003 to 2010. 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 2003, Donaldson resigned from the UUP, becoming a member of the DUP in the following year.

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 DUP 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.

In February 2022, the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed due to DUP protests against the Northern Ireland Protocol. Donaldson was once again elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 2022 Assembly election, but he subsequently chose to remain as a Westminster MP, with Emma Little-Pengelly instead taking his seat. Donaldson opposed the Windsor Framework announced by the Sunak government in February 2023 and, for 22 months, Donaldson refused to nominate a deputy First Minister to restore Stormont. In February 2024, the Northern Ireland Executive was restored after a deal was agreed by Donaldson with Sunak's government.

..... The party also suspended his membership. Donaldson said that he would strenuously contest the criminal charges. In May 2024, Donaldson's solicitor confirmed that he was not intending to stand for re-election at the 2024 general election.

Early life

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.

Two of Donaldson's cousins were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army while serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

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.

Political career

From 1982 to 1984, he was the constituency agent for the UUP MP Enoch Powell, managing Powell's successful re-election campaigns in 1983 and 1986. He then worked as personal assistant to the UUP leader James Molyneaux until Molyneaux retired from politics in 1997.

Entering politics

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 took part 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 21 unionist representatives who refused to leave the chamber at Stormont and was eventually physically removed from the building by the 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 that 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." That led to his selection, in January 1997, as a candidate for the Westminster Parliament, and he was elected at the 1997 general election as the 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: The History of the IRA, 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 UDR and the UUP at the age of 18 to oppose the IRA both militarily and politically.

Role in the peace process

In 1998, Donaldson was in the UUP's negotiating team for the Good Friday Agreement. However, on the morning 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.

Dissent from the UUP

Donaldson engineered several party council meetings in protest against David Trimble's policies. 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. The MPs remained party members and in November 2003 Assembly election Donaldson was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for the UUP as an MLA for Lagan Valley.

Following the success of the rival DUP in the same Assembly election of 2003, Donaldson reiterated his call for Trimble's immediate resignation, but the party continued to back Trimble. On 18 December 2003 Donaldson, Norah Beare MLA and Arlene Foster announced their resignation from the UUP, and on 5 January 2004 they announced that they had joined the DUP.

After joining the DUP

Donaldson was returned to the House of Commons in the 2005 UK general election and, in 2007, he was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, entitling him to the honorific style of The Right Honourable. At the March 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, he was re-elected as an MLA for Lagan Valley.

In July 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Donaldson had repaid £555 claimed for pay-to-view films in overnight hotel stays. In total, Donaldson submitted claim forms, including receipts, for 68 pay-to-view movies. .....

Donaldson was appointed to government by First Minister Peter Robinson, and held the position of Junior Minister in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister from 2008 to 2009. Being also an MP, he lost his position due to the DUP's phasing out of "double jobbing". Following his re-election to the House of Commons at the general election in May 2010, Donaldson stood down from the Northern Ireland Assembly on 10 June, and was replaced on 16 June by Paul Givan.

He was a member of the Public Bill Committee for the Defence Reform Act 2014.

DUP leadership

Donaldson speaking during Prime Minister's Questions, 7 February 2024

On 3 May 2021, exactly 100 years after Northern Ireland was effectively established, Donaldson declared his candidacy for the leadership of the DUP to replace Arlene Foster. He lost the subsequent leadership election to Edwin Poots MLA, by 19 votes to 17.

Poots resigned after only 21 days as leader, having faced an internal revolt against his decision to proceed without delay to nominate Paul Givan as First Minister, after Sinn Féin had reached an agreement with the Westminster government about an Irish Language Act. The Belfast Telegraph described the events as "one of the most tumultuous days in the DUP's 50-year history".

On 21 June, Donaldson declared his candidacy for the leadership of the DUP to replace Poots, pledging to make the Northern Ireland Protocol his main priority. He was the sole candidate. The party's electoral college endorsed him as leader-designate and he was confirmed in the post by the party's ruling executive on 30 June.

In July 2021, Donaldson said in a UTV interview that he intended to resign his seat as a Westminster MP and become Northern Ireland First Minister before the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, but also said that he did not yet know precisely how he would bring that about.

In August 2021, UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, appointed Donaldson as the UK's trade envoy to Cameroon, in addition to his role as the trade envoy to Egypt.

It was announced on 24 August 2021, that Donaldson was planning to stand as a candidate for Lagan Valley in the Assembly election the following year if he was not co-opted to a vacant seat in the time leading up to the election. Plans were drawn up to temporarily re-allow "double jobbing", which would have allowed Donaldson to be in the Assembly and remain an MP. However, these plans were dropped, so, if Donaldson were to become a member of the Assembly, he would cease to be an MP, triggering a by-election. Donaldson was elected to the Assembly in the May 2022 election, but declined to take up his seat, with the party instead co-opting Emma Little-Pengelly. Donaldson said he would not take up his Assembly seat until the situation over the Northern Ireland Protocol was resolved.

.....

Views

Donaldson opposed the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). He supported Brexit, but called for the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed between the UK and the EU in December 2020, which establishes a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, to be reformed or revoked. Despite his earlier rejection of the GFA, he stated in January 2021 that the Protocol "actually undermines the Good Friday agreement".

Donaldson has been accused of making anti-Catholic comments. In 2009, Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) deputy leader Alasdair McDonnell demanded an apology from Donaldson and a retraction of his claim that Catholics owed allegiance in the first instance to the Pope and the Holy See.

Donaldson opposes same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland, legalised by the British Government in December 2019. Jeffrey Donaldson has repaid £555 to the House of Commons’ fees office after charging dozens of pay-to-view movies to the tax payer.The former junior minister made claims for 68 pay-to-view movies at London hotels where he stayed in 2004 and 2005, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Personal life

On 26 June 1987, Donaldson married Eleanor Cousins, with whom he has two daughters.

He is a member of the mainstream Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

Speaking of his national identity, Donaldson says that he is "Irish and British, Northern Irish and British, and British." He noted that he was a member of the Irish Presbyterian church, which is organised on an all-Ireland basis. He described his national identity as geographically Irish, but also as being "part of a wider group of nations that is British". He believes that there is no contradiction in identifying as Irish, Northern Irish and British.

Honours

Donaldson was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 2007. That entitles him to the honorific style "The Right Honourable" for life.

In the 2016 Birthday Honours, he was appointed Knight Bachelor for political service.