Lagan Valley
UUP hold

Following the loss of Antrim South in the September 2000 by-election, which most commentators described as the Ulster Unionist Party's second safest seat, the hard-line would-be replacement for David Trimble as leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, now clearly has his party's safest seat of all at Lagan Valley. It is centred on the Lisburn council area and also includes Hillsborough, the site of the Anglo-Irish agreement of the mid 1980s, which Donaldson inherited from a former leader, James Molyneaux. Actually, in percentage terms (on which safety should really be calculated) this was already the safest of all after the 1997 general election.

Jeffrey Donaldson, elected here in 1997, is David Trimble's rival for the leadership of the Ulster Unionists as head of the anti-Agreement majority among the Party's nine-strong Parliamentary group. Uncharacteristically cerebral and young (born 1962) for a Unionist MP, most of whom are dismissed by Trimble as "woodentops", he campaigned against the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 referendum and was barred by Trimble as a candidate in the Assembly elections. A former estate agent, educated at Kilheel High School and Castlereagh College, his mild and soporific manner conceal a steely ambition to be Trimble's replacement when power-sharing collapses.