The embattled members of the Democratic Unionist party gathered at a hotel on the outskirts of Belfast this weekend for their annual conference, the last before next year’s Northern Ireland Assembly and council elections.

The ghost at the feast was sitting in a cell at the high security Maghaberry prison just over 20 miles away. Jeffrey Donaldson, former DUP leader and paedophile, continues to cast a shadow over the party he once led after he was found guilty in June of this year of a myriad of sexual offences against two women when they were young girls.

For a party which still trades off its roots in the morally upright and uptight strictures of evangelical Protestantism, to have been led by a convicted child abuser presents an existential challenge. Following his trial, further disclosures were made, including by colleagues in the DUP, which painted a picture of Donaldson’s sordid shadow existence, composed of trips to gay saunas, extra marital affairs and copious drinking on foreign trips.

The DUP has commissioned an investigation by the child protection expert Jim Gamble into Donaldson’s time with........

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