Only a day after striking an agreement with Sinn Féin and the British and Irish governments to end a three-month crisis at Stormont, Northern Ireland’s first minister Peter Robinson has announced that he is to stand down.
Robinson has been a leading figure in the Democratic Unionist party for decades, and his decision raises significant questions for the future of the province.
If Ian Paisley was the Unionist pilot of the historic settlement that brought bitter old enemies to share government together in 2007, then Robinson, his longtime deputy, was the navigator. Both were indispensable: Paisley the Big Man with the big picture and an uncanny feel for his grassroots, Robinson the consummate party manager, the one who forensically rechecked everything – line by line, word by word. It was this thoroughness that led to a final agreement most had thought would never happen.
During the two years we worked together, from 2005, Robinson was impatient with Paisley’s lack of attention to detail. But in the last weeks, when Sinn Féin had finally signed up to support policing and the rule of law, and Paisley had made up his mind to say yes when he had always trumpeted no, Robinson became the back marker.
He was alarmed his leader had moved too far, too fast – even irritated; I had become too close to Paisley. He played for time and worked furiously to ensure his DUP colleagues could be brought on board, with the naysayers marginalised.
In government, Paisley preached harmony and reconciliation, forming a remarkable relationship with the deputy first minister and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness. Robinson tidied up behind him, managing the grumbles of colleagues.
When he moved, with other senior figures such as Nigel Dodds, to oust and replace the Big Man they showed a ruthlessness never forgiven in the Paisley clan.
Many thought Robinson was a natural number two, but he proved an effective first minister, bedding down the awkward, unwieldy system of power-sharing government, resolving perpetual crises, standoffs and cliff edges. It brought him little affection but, I think, considerable credit.
These past eight years have hardly been inspiring. The all-party executive has bumped along, vetoes getting in the way of good governance, leaving voters disillusioned. But then could it have been otherwise? Unionist leaders such as Paisley and Robinson had never exchanged even a courtesy with the republican leaders, Gerry Adams and McGuinness. There was real hatred. The divide between communities went back centuries. The bombings, murders and terror had left deep wounds.
Although unionist politicians endorsed the 2007 peace settlement, they never applauded it. Their acceptance was grudging; many were deeply anguished at working with former IRA militants.
In this continuing transitional phase towards the goal of normalisation around more conventional democratic divisions, the DNA of Northern Ireland’s politics will remain at once clumsily dysfunctional yet immeasurably better than the sectarian prejudices and horror of the past. And the 2007 settlement won’t be reversed.
The word on the street is that Dodds, a Belfast MP, will become DUP leader from Westminster and Arlene Foster, the assembly’s finance minister, will be the new DUP first minister. To outsiders it may seem an odd setup, but ironically the arrangement is mirrored in Sinn Féin, where Adams leads his party from the Irish parliament in Dublin and McGuinness in Belfast.
Whoever succeeds, the real question for the future of Northern Ireland is a much larger one. Will the DUP’s top figures be leaders or followers? Followership had been the party’s norm before Ian Paisley realised his moment of destiny. It has long been easy in the DUP to court popularity by marching supporters to the old tunes; leadership – as Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn is discovering – is very different. It requires the courage of sometimes telling followers what they don’t wish to hear in the best interests of progress.
Robinson, like Paisley before him, demonstrated that quality. Given the fresh start pledged in Wednesday’s agreement between the parties, whoever succeeds Robinson will also require this quality.
