Analysis: Donaldson needed no pressure from dark forces to tell his biggest political lie of all - and the DUP went along with it because it suited

TUV leader Jim Allister said it is “inconceivable that the government was unaware of his proclivities and the idea of such being used as leverage is far from fanciful”. The government has branded this claim “deeply distasteful and absolute nonsense”.

There is no evidence to back up the notion that the prosecution was used to pressure the now-convicted paedophile to accept a deal which he used to try to deceive the public, and the timelines don’t appear to support that idea.

That is not to say that this clearly devious individual could not have committed other crimes, or hadn’t compromised himself in other ways. If he had, we may never know if it was used against him.

Donaldson was convicted of a string of vile sex crimes against children on Monday, and is set to receive a lengthy prison sentence. He was a man taken into the heart of the country’s establishment on the Privy Council, where he advised the late Queen Elizabeth and then King Charles. Yet he now resides in Maghaberry prison in his former constituency.

The reality is that when Donaldson told his biggest political lie – that the Irish Sea border had been removed – the bulk of his party either believed him or chose to believe him. The DUP wanted back into the executive, and needed to be able to show they’d achieved something. So Donaldson claimed victory – the DUP had removed the border.

There was a vocal and outspoken rump – figures like Lord Morrow, Lord Dodds and Sammy Wilson MP – who could see the deal merely entrenched the trade frontier. But they had been marginalised as Donaldson built a party in his own image.

Someone was so concerned by the attempt to railroad through a “sell-out” that they wore a wire, allowing Jamie Bryson to plaster details of the deal all over social media in one of the most extraordinary political farces the province has ever witnessed.

The reality was that the ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal Donaldson was selling made no difference whatsoever to the fact that Northern Ireland’s goods market was severed from that of the rest of the UK. That was critical, because while the discussion at the time focused on checks that would be conducted on the likes of supermarket goods, there were much more fundamental issues at stake.

Donaldson was keen to keep the focus on inspections and paperwork, rather than the underlying problem of EU law – as was the bulk of his party. The political reality was they couldn’t win that fight in the short term.

The fundamental problem for unionists was that the EU remained in control of regulations. They covered everything from meat imports to digital downloads, cars to Artificial Intelligence. The scale of the barriers – regulatory or physical – was huge, and is still emerging.

The seven tests the party set out for its return to Stormont acknowledged the political reality, calling for no “new” barriers, and the prevention of “new customs or regulatory checks”.

That is, save for one – “ensure there is no border in the Irish Sea”. A high bar it must have known couldn’t be met without a complete renegotiation of the post-Brexit deal.

That was never going to happen while the Windsor Framework remained in place, as the more modest asks of the other tests acknowledged.

Yet the DUP leader claimed the border was gone. “Zero checks, zero customs paperwork on goods moving within the United Kingdom. That takes away the border within the UK,” Donaldson claimed.

That was a lie, as the News Letter reported the day the DUP-Tory deal was announced – the Irish Sea border would remain.

In the days before it was signed, Donaldson’s duplicity was on display in Parliament as he built a narrative of the courageous saviour of unionism, and victim of the naysayers. He told MPs he had been threatened for his efforts, “by those who never put on a uniform” and hadn’t voted, he claimed, in the last election. The DUP reported the alleged threats to police.

Even political rivals sympathised. Then-SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said those who threatened him “couldn't lace his boots”.

Donaldson claimed a decision was made not to press charges. Police said no offences were detected.

With a willing party, the DUP leader needed no pressure over his undisclosed criminality – about which there is no proof they knew anything – to return to Stormont, only enough to spin to the public as a victory. Many were keen for a return to the executive – and there was a compelling unionist argument for that.

However, the DUP chose a different path – and went along with his transparent lie.

Briefings to journalists by the party talked up the supposed “best of both worlds” under the arrangements, a concept only viable because of the Irish Sea border.

Donaldson told an outrageous lie to unionist voters by claiming the Irish Sea border was gone. He can only have assumed that they, like him, wouldn’t understand much of the detail.

The problem was that the lie was so brazen, so obvious, it was a gift to his critics. When challenged, Donaldson simply went on the attack.

Political rivals like Jim Allister, old allies like Jamie Bryson, journalists – even a former attorney general – were all wrong. It was the man who denied NI was still in the EU single market, the man for whom customs checks weren’t a constitutional matter, that was right.

Donaldson needed no external pressure to tell that lie. It was just easier than telling the truth, which was that his deal changed almost nothing – and the DUP wanted to be back in Stormont.