NORTHERN IRELAND IS on track for one of its most volatile and unpredictable elections; Unionist parties are in free fall, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) ranks are depleted, and the Alliance Party is on the defensive.

The fallout from former party leader Jeffrey Donaldson’s criminal conviction continues, but the DUP are far from the only party ill-prepared for a double election. After decades of political stagnation, could Northern Ireland’s political landscape dramatically change next May?

The DUP has had two years to prepare for the potential damage that a guilty verdict for Donaldson would bring, and yet the two weeks since his conviction have demonstrated that for all its efforts to create distance, the party is unable to disassociate itself from Donaldson’s decades of lies and hypocrisy.

There is no suggestion that the party was aware of the heinous crimes Donaldson was convicted of, which include the rape of a child. What is clear is that senior leaders were acutely aware that the pious image of the man they pinned their mast to was a lie.

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Hardly a day has passed without a new revelation; a BBC Spotlight special featured former senior party representatives exposing a pattern of drunken behaviour and reports of inappropriate sexual incidents against women, including an unnamed MLA.

Subsequent reporting from the Belfast Telegraph suggests the party was well aware that........

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