THE downfall of Jeffrey Donaldson is first and foremost a story about justice for his victims, but as they hopefully move on with their lives, the political impact is only beginning.

Donaldson was a leading figure in Northern Ireland politics for 30 years, with connections to other leading unionist figures dating back a further decade.

All those years are recast in the light of his notoriety.

We now know he was committing his crimes throughout the decade when he tore the UUP apart over the Good Friday Agreement, actions he justified at the time on Christian moral principle.

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The DUP might carefully point out that it inherited Donaldson from the UUP, kept him at arm’s length in Westminster, and only belatedly made him leader under strange and desperate circumstances.

He never seemed to be entirely trusted, but that raises the question of whether the party always had suspicions about him.

Even if it did not, it cannot escape the fact that it owes its position as the lead party of unionism to a UUP implosion Donaldson did more than any other person to bring about.

Donaldson was also instrumental in the Leave campaign at Westminster, for reasons that remain unexplained.

He was the leader who cajoled the DUP into accepting the sea border, by falsely claiming to have abolished it.

How can all that now be explained to the unionist electorate?

Donaldson has done extraordinary damage to the story the DUP tells about itself.

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Sinn Féin’s three-year budget for Stormont is effectively dead, with even the party’s economy minister Caoimhe Archibald – a former finance minister – saying she cannot support it.

It has been a strange exercise from the start.

John O’Dowd, Sinn Féin’s current finance minister, published a draft without Executive approval in January, apparently to try bouncing along an obstructive DUP.

But all four Executive parties soon agreed the problem was lack........

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