What does that mean?

Well, it's an interesting quote you bring up from Alastair Campbell because it's one you hear a lot and you hear people say something along the lines of, if you're a politician, you should believe in your Christianity at the door of the Assembly or the House of Commons.

And that's a profoundly absurd thing, because somebody cannot leave their Christianity at the door of their job.

It's not a part of who you are.

It is who you are, just as, you know, I don't know where Alistair Campbell stands, but, you know, just as an atheist stands.

Who they are is their atheism.

You know, just as someone who is of a different religion, that is who they are.

And people get hung up on, I don't want to be seen to be supporting one party or another when that's not what it's about at all.

I know you don't give advice to the DUP anymore, Tim, but if you were giving them advice now, what would you say?

Well, I agree with a lot of what Sarah said.

I think undoubtedly the party needs to get ahead of the story.

People have said this week that the DUP's reaction to the story was textbook crisis management.

I think that's probably right up until Monday night.

I think since Monday night, they've lost control of the story completely.

And I think they need to initiate some sort of investigation.

they didn't know about it? Jim's absolutely

Um, there certainly were over many years, many rumors

rumorsAbout Jeffrey Donaldson and things that he would've been up to in, in London a- and further afield.

Now, Suzanne h- has actually, uh, put forward a few of those yesterday in the paper, and then today we had another, uh, allegation.

Some of the, the rumors I was aware of.

Some of the rumors that so far have come out I have not been aware of, and there are other rumors that were talked about that, uh, I have yet to read or see, and I suspect some of those will, will feed out o- over the, the incoming days.

It is interesting to me that people, apart from Edwin Poots actually, are not going on the record at the moment with tho- those rumors.

So people are approaching journalists, it seems, and telling their story, whatever their story is, but are remaining anonymous.

Even though it's been very clear it knew nothing about what Jeffrey Donaldson was up to, and of course, has been very forceful its, in its condemnation of his activities.

What are his recollections of those heady times for the party?

I think all of this really started, you've got to go back to, I think, the summer of 2020, whenever there was the very boring piece of legislation going through Stormont, which was the Executive Committee Functions Bill.

And there was a big showdown, if people remember that.

Richard Bullock, a former advisor to Arlene Foster, and Arlene Foster had a disagreement over a very technical issue about wins that the DUP had had at St Andrew's.

We're not getting into bore people with, with what that issue was, but there was a very public spat between them.

Richard Bullock had left, and he was in the private sector at that time, and he said that what Arlene Foster was doing was going to erode the protections in the, that had been won at St Andrew's and subsequent judicial reviews.

Arlene disagreed.

And Tim, just looking back specifically to five years ago, was Jeffrey Donaldson the right man at the right time after the dramatic end of the Foster years and what turned out to be the Putz glitch?