Suzanne Breen: Jeffrey Donaldson and Jamie Bryson were once the odd couple of NI politics, but the bromance is well and truly over

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/suzanne-breen/donaldson-and-bryson-were-once-the-odd-couple-of-ni-politics-but-the-bromance-is-well-and-truly-over/a2019463859.html

The bromance is officially over. The relationship between Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Jamie Bryson, which blossomed in those heady days of anti-protocol protests, has come to a swift but unsurprising end.
Divorce is on the cards; the pair now aren’t even talking.
Donaldson has stopped dithering. As he prepares to sell a deal to his party, he has finally decided to distance himself from the loyalist.
Bryson says that, at a meeting in Westminster on Tuesday, the DUP leader “warned” his MPs and peers they must no longer speak to Bryson and that he would “find out” if they disobeyed.
“We are in the realms of desperation,” Bryson tweeted about Sir Jeffrey’s alleged edict.
Asked about the matter, a DUP spokesperson said: “The DUP does not discuss internal business.”
Bryson was more loquacious: “Telling his Westminster colleagues — grown adults, with their own minds — not to talk to me is a childish move by Jeffrey.
“Does he think I’m going to bewitch them? These are experienced politicians, not naive individuals who will be led by the nose.
“Jeffrey is delusional if he believes the problem simply is that I’ve whipped [people] up into a frenzy.
“It wasn’t me who exploded political grenades in advance of that DUP meeting last Friday,” said Bryson, laying the blame with Donaldson’s own party.
Bryson seems to be heading back in the direction he came: being the bane of the DUP’s life.
A decade ago, the party would never have dreamed of sharing platforms with him. Rather, it worked hard to shut him up.
It opposed him appearing at Stormont’s Finance Committee in 2015 where he made explosive claims about corruption around the sale of Nama’s £1.1bn Northern Ireland property portfolio.
He alleged that then-DUP leader Peter Robinson was to benefit financially. Robinson insisted he had never expected nor received any money from the deal and blasted Bryson’s accusation as a “pantomime”.
“It is outrageous that such scurrilous and unfounded allegations can be made without providing one iota of evidence,” he said.
Given Sir Jeffrey’s closeness to Robinson, it is astounding that he ever entertained the loyalist.
They became the odd couple of Northern Ireland politics. A highly regarded MP of 27 years’ standing — and a privy counsellor, no less — with the former leader of the flags protest.
Theirs was no brief nor behind-closed-doors dalliance. They shared numerous rally platforms. Donaldson wrote the foreword to Bryson’s book and several articles for his Unionist Voice website.
In January 2021, the loyalist had called on the DUP to make Stormont “ungovernable” until the Irish Sea border was removed. The party dismissed his proposal as “foolish”. Fourteen months later, it crashed the Executive over the NI Protocol.
Bryson spoke glowingly of Sir Jeffrey: “He has won my trust and respect. After dismissing him as a latte-drinking appeaser, I now admit that I misjudged the man.”
It is all very different today. The loyalist is preparing to use the words Donaldson spoke at those rallies to arraign him.
“Fundamental promises have been made on platforms,” he said.
“If there is an abject surrender deal, the people who heard those speeches won’t silently walk away. It will be a battle a day.”
And he issued his own warning: “If unionist politics fails then protest action may fill the vacuum.”
So why did Donaldson personally join forces with him in the first place?
PSNI launches investigation into threats against DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson
Jamie Bryson: ‘I could live with a deal from Bertie Ahern… but I would never accept a united Ireland’
Like Trimble before him, Donaldson knows the right thing to do is also the riskiest thing to do
Befriending Bryson helped Sir Jeffrey regain his party’s standing with grassroots loyalism. Rather than being booed at anti-protocol demonstrations, its leaders were now cheered.
But there could have been a further motivating factor. Perhaps Donaldson entertained the foolish hope that Bryson was malleable and that, when push came to shove on the protocol, he could be won over and Jim Allister left isolated.
Maybe Sir Jeffrey surmised that, because the loyalist is three decades younger than the TUV leader, he could be seduced.
If so, Donaldson clearly did not know the nature of the beast. Despite the DUP leader’s undisputed diplomatic skills, the loyalist was never a candidate for conversion. Bryson was always going to savage him when he moved to compromise.
Sir Jeffrey may have ended his relationship with Bryson, but will others in the party continue their affairs with him?
Bryson has many personal friends and some key political allies in the DUP. Only time will tell whether those individuals keep their channels of communication to him open.
The loyalist is confident that it’s business as usual.
“Senior figures in the DUP are very concerned about the direction of travel, and are working closely with me in areas of common interest,” he said.
“Jeffrey’s diktat to DUP people not to talk to me won’t be effective.”
Bryson says the fallout isn’t personal: “Look, I like Jeffrey as an individual and I respect him, but I feel we’re now diverging on fundamental issues. There will be no quarter given in terms of political arguments.”
There has been speculation online that, if his relationship with the DUP really sours, Bryson could leak private messages he has from some of its members.
“There is no prospect of that, no matter how robust or difficult the situation becomes. Under no circumstances will I breach the confidence of any individual,” he said.
A fair few figures may be breathing a sigh of relief at that pledge.
Sometimes, at the end of an affair, silence is golden.

by LoveLaughLarne